Perceptions Of Effective Clinical Teaching Behaviors PDF Download

INTRODUCTION: Clinical education is essential for preparing physical therapist (PT) students to enter professional practice. In PT education, students are typically supervised by a clinical instructor (CI) who is an employee of the clinical site. The purpose of this study was to identify the perceptions of CIs regarding the importance and frequency of CI behaviors, and to compare these findings to the perceptions of Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) students in a previous study. SUBJECTS: 499 licensed PTs who had served as a CI to a DPT student in the past 3 years were participants. METHODS: This study was a cross sectional survey which consisted of 43 previously identified CI behaviors in 4 categories: communication, interpersonal relations, professional skills, and teaching behaviors. Using a 4-point scale, respondents were asked to rate the behaviors for importance and how frequently they exhibited each behavior. RESULTS: Based on weighted average rank, CI behaviors in the category of interpersonal relations were rated by respondents as most important, followed by communication, then professional skills, and last, teaching behaviors. The same order of rankings was found for the perceived frequency of behaviors. A significant positive correlation between importance and frequency was found for all 43 CI behaviors. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: A comparison of the results of this study to those of Ozga et al, indicated that both CIs and DPT students rated CI behaviors in the category of interpersonal relations as most important, followed by the categories of communications, professional skills, and teaching behaviors. For both Cis and DPT students, the category rankings for frequency that behaviors were exhibited mirrored the importance rankings. These findings suggest that Cis and DPT students value similar CI behaviors, and have similar perceptions regarding the frequency with which these behaviors are exhibited.