Is length of experience an appropriate criterion to identify level of expertise?

Abstract

Clinical experience plays an important role in the development of expertise, particularly when coupled with reflection on practice. There is debate, however, regarding the amount of clinical experience that is required to become an expert. Various lengths of practice have been suggested as suitable for determining expertise, ranging from five years to 15 years. This study aimed to investigate the association between length of experience and therapists' level of expertise in the field of cerebral palsy with upper limb hypertonicity using an empirical procedure named Cochrane-Weiss-Shanteau (CWS). The methodology involved re-analysis of quantitative data collected in two previous studies. In Study 1, 18 experienced occupational therapists made hypothetical clinical decisions related to 110 case vignettes, while in Study 2, 29 therapists considered 60 case vignettes drawn randomly from those used in Study 1. A CWS index was calculated for each participant's case decisions. Then, in each study, Spearman's rho was calculated to identify the correlations between the duration of experience and level of expertise. There was no significant association between these two variables in both studies. These analyses corroborated previous findings of no association between length of experience and judgemental performance. Therefore, length of experience may not be an appropriate criterion for determining level of expertise in relation to cerebral palsy practice.

Relationship Between Intuition and Emotional Intelligence in Occupational Therapists in Mental Health Practice

“…In our study, however, the only statistically significant difference in CSI was between novice and experienced therapists; the CSI scores of therapists at the intermediate experience level did not differ significantly from those of therapists at either of the other experience levels. Rassafiani (2009) investigated the relationship between occupational therapists' length of experience and level of expertise by reanalyzing their treatment recommendations for hypothetical clients with cerebral palsy from two previous studies. He found no significant association between years of experience and expertise and concluded that the development of expertise is multifaceted and includes reflection, observation of expert practice, and opportunities for feedback.…”

Making Decision-Making Visible- Teaching the Process of Evaluating Interventions

“…There is general consensus that thinking changes with experience and expertise [47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56]. One benefit of this change is that experienced clinicians often recognize similar situations (e.g., familiar problems) more quickly [57].…”

The critical occupational therapy practitioner: How to define expertise?

“…Much of the understanding of what constitutes an expert is built on the work of Dreyfus and Dreyfus's () model of skills acquisition via the work of Benner (). The major determinant of expertise in the occupational therapy research literature seems to be length of service (Kuipers & Grice, ), although Rassafiani () and others (Weiss, Shanteau & Harries, ) have demonstrated no correlation between length of experience and expertise. Dreyfus and Dreyfus's () model was based on their work with military pilots, a profession where a longstanding perception of expertise related to flight time is existent.…”

“…While Benner () was quite prescriptive about relating skills acquisition to duration of experience in new graduates, she was very careful not to do so when describing experts, stating quite explicitly ‘experience is not the mere passage of time or longevity’ (Benner, , p. 407). Subsequent to Benner's original work, other authors (cited in Rassafiani, ) have, perhaps misguidedly, extrapolated from her work to suggest somewhat arbitrary durations of service concomitant with the term ‘expert’. However, drawing on Benner's original work and best evidence, duration of service should not be considered as a criterion for judging expertise and, for example, for the purposes of conducting research into the phenomena, the term expert should be associated with characteristics or criteria other than simply length of experience.…”