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Clinical Education SIG

The Clinical Education SIG shall serve as a resource and forum for individuals who have professional concerns for the coordination, implementation, and evaluation of clinical education for physical therapists and physical therapist assistants. This includes academic and clinical faculty.

UPDATE: APTA Hub is now APTA Communities.  

The Hub's you may have been a member of have been migrated to the APTA website and are now referred to as Communities. 

How do I find it? Navigate to the APTA home page. You will see a tab at the top of the page labeled "Communities". Once you click this tab, you can choose to view the communities you are in or browse all communities. You will need to be logged into your APTA account to access this. 

  • To provide a vehicle for increasing and improving communication among clinical educators.
  • To increase the participation of clinical educators in the APTA Academy of Education.
  • To provide continuing education in areas pertinent to clinical evaluation and teaching.
  • To foster problem solving in clinical education using the scientific method.
  • To promote cooperative efforts among educational programs and clinical sites in scheduling, evaluation, and continuing education.
  • To develop guidelines for the continuing development and evaluation of academic and clinical faculty involved in clinical education.
  • To serve as a resource body involved in acquiring, cataloguing, and disseminating information relating to clinical education in physical therapy.
To view the SIG Standing Rules, please click here. 
The Physical Therapist and Physical Therapist Assistant Clinical Performance Instruments are performance assessments designed to evaluate student performance during their clinical experiences. The CPI is completed by the Clinical Instructor at midterm and at the end of the clinical experience. Students also complete a self-evaluation using the same tool. During the student's clinical experience, the CI provides opportunities that allow the student to practice specific skills and behaviors that correspond with the student's current level of academic preparation (American Physical Therapy Association, 2018).
The PT CPI was developed in 1997 and revised in 2006. The PTA CPI was developed in 1998 and revised in 2009. Both instruments underwent content and format changes and were adapted from paper-and-pencil administration to online administration. In 2020, APTA partnered with HumRRO (a research company) to streamline the CPI content and rating scales and, as a result, continued to build support for the validity and reliability of the CPI. The psychometric review of the CPIs and the revisions were completed in November 2022, and APTA then partnered with CompetencyAI to create a new CPI 3.0 web platform. The new CPI 3.0 web platform was released on May 15, 2023.  

Anyone using the CPI, must first pass the required free training available through the APTA Learning Center. Successful completion of this training and assessment program (passing 100%) is required for all users to access the PT and PTA CPI 3.0.

Access PT/PTA CPI via APTA Learning Center
LEADERSHIP
Clinical Co-Chair: Angela N. Henning, PT, Cert MDT, CCS

Academic Co-Chair: Elsa Drevyn, PT, DPT
Membership Secretary: Julie Gruden, PT
Recording Secretary: KeithAnn Halle, PT, DPT, CBIS
SIG Nominating Committee Chair: Julie Lombardi, PT, DPT, CBIS, NCS
SIG Nominating Committee Member: Amanda Piccoli, PT

SIG Nominating Committee Member: Jane Fagan PT, DPT, OCS

CESIG Leadership
CESIG Leadership