Purpose: There is a potential link between the clinical education phase of a physical therapist’s education and increased incidence of student mental health challenges. The Director of Clinical Education (DCE) has a complex role in supporting students and clinical sites during clinical education experiences (CEEs.) The purposes of this study were to explore DCE’s experiences and perceptions with supporting students with mental health challenges during CEEs. Methods: Two-hundred-twenty DCEs from accredited Doctor of Physical Therapy programs were invited to participate in an electronic survey. Survey questions included demographics, institutional and curricular characteristics, and current perceptions/experiences with student mental health challenges. DCEs (n = 106; 48.2%) responded and were included in the analyses. Analyses included descriptive statistics, simple frequencies, and binary logistic regression. Incident coding processes analyzed responses of open-ended questions. Results: Seventy-four percent of respondents indicated awareness of a student(s) experiencing a mental health concern during a full-time clinical experience in the past 3 years. Regression analyses showed that length of terminal clinical experience, out-of-state placement, cohort size, and availability of online/video counseling were related to prevalence of DCE’s experience. Forty-six percent of DCEs indicated feeling prepared to deal with these issues, while 35% were ‘unsure’. DCEs indicated experience, training, and workload support as contributors to successfully supporting students. Conclusion: Results contribute to the emerging understanding of the prevalence of student mental health challenges in physical therapist education from the DCE’s perspective. Our findings suggest that institutional and curricular characteristics are potential contributors to the prevalence of this issue. We recommend training and institutional support for the DCE in these situations.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the use of a week-one clinical survey tool for early identification of student perceived barriers, including personal and environmental safety, that may impact success during full-time clinical education experiences (CEE) in physical therapy. Methods: DPT students (n= 81) engaged in full-time CEE in their second and third years were required to complete an online self-designed survey tool regarding perceptions of safety, clinical instructor (CI) satisfaction, and clinical challenges. Students in their third year completed the survey for both experiences. Data were assessed to compare second versus third-year student responses overall using a Mann-Whitney U test. Qualitative data was analyzed using an incident coding process. Results: Most students (65.1%) indicated high satisfaction with their CI (≥ 9 on a 10-pt scale). Two students (1.8%) indicated feeling unsafe. There were no differences between cohorts for perception of personal safety or completion of orientation, but there was a difference in rating of their experience with the CI (p = .008). Narrative responses revealed that students’ perceptions of CI personality characteristics were related to their overall CI satisfaction. There were no differences between cohorts or levels of CEE in overall qualitative themes from the open-ended questions, but there was a difference in the impact of each qualitative theme and associated subcategories. Conclusion: During the first week of a CEE, students reported high CI satisfaction and low personal and environmental safety concerns. Further research is needed to examine the perspective of other stakeholders with the utilization of this week-one clinical survey tool. The results of this study are the first to contribute an understanding of the barriers to success during the first week of a CEE from the students’ perspective.