Begging to Differ? Clinicians’ and academics’ views on desirable attributes for physiotherapy students on clinical placement

Abstract

Transfer of physiotherapy education from a health service base to a university base has resulted in a period of dissonance and disorientation for both academic and clinical educators. This is reflected in dissatisfaction with the way students' learning is assessed on clinical placement and its effect on the quality of students' clinical education experience. This study used a triadic repertory grid procedure to reveal the perceptions of 20 university-based academics and 20 clinical educators in practice placements as to the attributes of good clinical performance and bad clinical performance by undergraduate physiotherapy students. The data were subjected to factor analysis and content analysis. The results indicated that a similar broad range of assessment criteria was applied by both groups in the study, but from their individual bipolar constructs eight common dimensions were identified as being used to differentiate between students. However, there were differences in emphasis between academics and clinicians as to the relative importance of the eight dimensions. On further analysis using an unrelated t-test, the eight dimensions were found to be consistently sensitive as discriminators of clinical performance (academics --p < 0.001; clinicians --p < 0.01). The implications of the findings are discussed with respect to the overall quality of students' learning, the overt and covert messages being relayed to students about professional competence and the need for reliable systems of clinical assessment in an increasingly litigious health care environment.

Characteristics of student preparedness for clinical learning: clinical educator perspectives using the Delphi approach

“…Thus, the onus for creating effective and successful relationships during clinical learning also falls to students who must present themselves as competent, professional and well prepared [15]. Being well prepared will also maximise the learning a student gains from the placement.…”

“…So what characteristics distinguish a competent, professional and well-prepared student to a clinical educator? A small body of work from Cross in the UK in the late 1990s evaluated the perceptions of university staff and clinical educators on the desirable and undesirable attributes of undergraduate physiotherapy students on clinical placement [10,15,16]. Desirable attributes included good communication skills, eagerness to learn, empathy and having a good knowledge base while undesirable attributes included being unsafe, unwilling to learn, arrogant and unprofessional [10,15].…”

The ‘Gift Exchange’: a metaphor for understanding the relationship between educator commitment and student effort on placement

“…Despite research in the context of physiotherapy clinical education, in the late 1990s, which highlighted a shared responsibility for creating effective and successful relationships (Cross 1998), the literature in the area of student-educator relationships tends to focus largely on educator attributes and actions rather than the intricacies of interaction. Considering the factors that impact on effective clinical supervision, Kilminster et al (2007) suggest that the supervisory relationship is more important than the methods used.…”

Physiotherapy students’ and clinical teachers’ perceptions of clinical learning opportunities: A case study

“…A review of the literature on physiotherapy clinical education made it evident that most research focussed on models of clinical education (Ladyshewsky 1993;Baldry Currens & Bithell 2003;Moore et al 2003;Stiller et al 2004;Frieg & Lochner 2005) and the role of the clinical teacher during clinical education (Harris & Naylor 1992;Onuoha 1994;Cross 1995;Mbambo 1999;Frieg & Rhoda 2006;Laitinen-Vaananen et al 2007). There is less focus on teaching and learning opportunities (Onuoha 1994;Walker & Openshaw 1994;Cross 1998;Babyar et al 2003). The literature studied indicated that the effectiveness of teaching and learning opportunities for facilitating learning during physiotherapy clinical training requires further investigation.…”