September 2013 Clinical Education Update
~by: Gail Wainwright, Academic Coordinator of Clinical Education, School of Physiotherapy
A New Tool to Assess Physiotherapy Students in Clinical Education
Physiotherapy placements in Canada are organized through members of the National Association for Clinical Education in Physiotherapy (NACEP). NACEP is made up of the Academic Coordinators of Clinical Education (ACCE) from each of the 14 university programs and the provincial or regional coordinators of clinical education. NACEP members have a joint procedure as to how national and international placements are processed. Under this mandate NACEP has been working on developing a new tool to assess physiotherapy students in clinical education.
Both the national survey to inform the tool and the new tool development are based on sound research methodology and both will result in PhDs for the ACCEs undertaking this research (Mark Hall - Alberta, and Brenda Mori - Toronto). Mark Hall’s thesis is titled "Identifying the factors contributing to Canadian physiotherapists' decisions to supervise students: Results of a national survey."
Following this survey of physiotherapists in Canada, the present assessment tool (the Clinical Performance Instrument, or CPI) was identified as a barrier to clinical placement opportunities. This together with Clinical Instructor (CI) stress, preparation to be a CI, student factors and professional role and responsibility are all contributors to the decision to supervise a student. Physiotherapy schools are beginning to address these barriers to clinical placements; on a national scale a new assessment tool has the potential for the largest impact. It has been an extensive process to develop this draft assessment tool in collaboration with Academic Coordinators/Directors of Clinical Education and Academic Chairs/Directors from each physiotherapy program across Canada. Stakeholder consultations included interviews with various experts, clinicians, recent graduates and a survey of physiotherapists across Canada.
The new assessment tool, called the Canadian Physiotherapy Assessment of Clinical Performance (ACP), is based on the Canadian Essential Competency Profile for Physiotherapists (ECP).1 The ECP is a foundational document that describes the essential competencies (i.e., the knowledge, skills and attitudes) required by physiotherapists in Canada at the beginning of and throughout their career. Based on the ECP, the newly developed ACP is only 10 pages which includes 21 rating scales, 9 comment boxes, and summative comments. The rating scale is a defined ordinal scale. As such, the new tool will be easier for clinicians to complete and provide more valuable feedback to students to assist in their development of competent physiotherapists. The development and testing of the ACP is the work of Brenda Mori and her thesis is titled “Developing a new tool to assess physiotherapy students in clinical education – The Canadian Physiotherapy Assessment of Clinical Performance.”
NACEP is currently pilot testing the draft ACP form in 10 schools across Canada, in both English and French, to explore the psychometric properties and feasibility of the tool. Data collection will continue until December 2013. NACEP hopes to analyze and apply the findings from the pilot testing, and implement the new tool Canada-wide by July, 2014. We extend a warm thank you to all those who have agreed to participate in the study pilot testing the new tool. Clinicians in Atlantic canada were a large part of the pilot testing. It truly is an exciting time for physiotherapy clinical education in Canada.
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1National Physiotherapy Advisory Group (October 2009). Essential Competency Profile for Physiotherapists in Canada. Toronto: Canadian Physiotherapy Association.