Effectiveness of the Community–Academia Student Tutoring (CAST) program in enhancing students’ practice placement readiness

Abstract

Introduction: Occupational therapy programs include practice education, which is a vital aspect of professional practice preparation. We evaluated the effectiveness of the Community-Academia Student Tutoring program for enhancing occupational therapy students' perceived readiness for their practice placement, thus reducing their feelings of anxiety. Method: The study included 84 first-year undergraduate occupational therapy students aged 21-35 years, of whom 43 participated in the Community-Academia Student Tutoring group program and the rest comprised the control group. Participants completed the Student Self-Competency and Readiness for Fieldwork questionnaire prior to their first practice placement. Findings: Anxiety was related to the Student Self-Competency and Readiness for Fieldwork's components and total score. The Community-Academia Student Tutoring group scored significantly higher (p < .05) than the controls in the Evaluation and Communication with Patients components of the questionnaire, after controlling for anxiety level. Implications: It appears that it is possible to enhance students' readiness for their practice placement through a structured and intensive community-based mentoring program that is guided by faculty and includes activities of briefing and debriefing, such as the Community-Academia Student Tutoring program.

Analysis of Occupational Therapy Students’ Pedagogical Practices for the Forging of Professional Identity and Development of Professional Intelligence: A Scoping Review

“…All studies were at the evidence level ( JBI 2014 ) four for effectiveness (Observational-Descriptive Studies), except Tal-Saban and Weintraub ( 2019 ) which was an Observational—Analytic Designs (Observational study without a control group). All studies were at level three for meaningfulness ( JBI 2014 ), they were single qualitative studies.…”

“…Learning outcomes associated with the development of confidence, self-efficacy, self-concept, and resilience were related to simulated and practice learning environments ( Brown et al 2019 ; Tal-Saban and Weintraub 2019 ). These results were linked to PBL pedagogical practices ( Hammel et al 1999 ; Whitcombe 2013 ), PBL skill development ( Botkin 1979 ; Knecht-Sabres 2013 ), simulation ( Haracz et al 2015 ; Imms et al 2018 ; Walls et al 2019 ) and feedback to reinforce learning reasoning ( Neistadt 1987 ).…”

“…Students’ sense of belonging to the occupational therapy profession was developed in pedagogical practices designed for this purpose. These included REP ( Golos and Tekuzener 2019 ; Knightbridge 2014 ; Thew et al 2018 ) and knowledge consolidation under supervision in fieldwork ( Davis 2006 ; Rodger et al 2014 ; Hills et al 2016 ; Tal-Saban and Weintraub 2019 ).…”

Enhancing professional identity of first-year occupational therapy students with the community-academia student tutoring program

“…To address the need for early PI development, the CAST pro gram was developed for occupational therapy students in their first year of undergraduate studies (TalSaban and Weintraub, 2019). CAST has four main objectives: (1) to establish the students' foundational PI as occupational therapists; (2) to deepen students' understanding of newly learned occupational therapy concepts and theories, such as occupational identity and occupational deprivation; (3) to enhance students' com prehension of occupational therapy practice to enhance prac tice placement readiness (such as clientcentered approaches, clinical reasoning, activity analysis); and (4) to develop stu dents' basic clinical competencies (i.e., identifying clients' occupational strengths and limitations, selfawareness of strengths, and difficulties, interpersonal relationships skills).…”

“…The CAST was originally developed to address multiple needs of first year students, alongside PI formation, such as the need to enhance practice placement readiness and under standing of professional basic concepts (TalSaban and Weintraub, 2019). In the current study, we focused at evalu ating the contribution of program to the specific aim of PI formation of occupational therapy students in their first year of study, using mix methods design including prepost com parison and qualitative inquiry.…”