Practice Ready Learning – The Journey to Clinical Excellence, USAHS Occupational Therapy Programs
Occupational Therapy students at the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences (USAHS) start developing clinical skills from the beginning of their program. They first practice with classmates before progressing to trained simulated patients and, eventually, real clients through the university’s pro bono clinic.
This progression gives students room to learn, make mistakes, ask questions, and build confidence before entering clinical practice. Campus resources include an inpatient simulation lab, individual treatment rooms modeled after clinical environments, and a mock Activities of Daily Living (ADL) apartment where students can work through realistic scenarios.
By the time students begin fieldwork, they’ve had opportunities to practice their skills in a variety of settings and work with different types of clients. The goal is to help them feel prepared for the realities of clinical practice and their first role after graduation.
Transcript
Practice Ready Learning – The Journey to Clinical Excellence, USAHS Occupational Therapy Programs
[00:00:00] Lynn Kilburg (OT Programs): Students really start preparing for practice from day one. [00:00:04] Erin Schwier (OT Programs): The ability to practice hands-on, the ability to really apply the skills with either simulated or real patients happens in the first semester. So we give opportunities right away. [00:00:13] Keith McWilliams (OT Faculty): The goal of our program is to help students to be practice-ready by giving them experiences that will help to guide them leading up to their clinical placements, but then ultimately helping them to be ready whenever it’s time for their first job. [00:00:26] Lynn Kilburg (OT Programs): They start out maybe working with each other, classmate to classmate, and then a simulated patient is a community member who’s been trained in order to model the diagnoses or the symptoms that they might encounter in real practice. [00:00:42] Keith McWilliams (OT Faculty): We also have a pro bono clinic where people are coming in from the community to receive therapy services where students are working alongside of our clinicians. [00:00:50] Erin Schwier (OT Programs): It scaffolds that in a way that allows students to build that confidence so that when they are with somebody who is in more of a vulnerable state, their confidence in themselves is there. [00:01:00] Lynn Kilburg (OT Programs): And it helps them take that knowledge into the next level. [00:01:03] Erin Schwier (OT Programs): We have an inpatient simulation lab. We’ve got individual treatment rooms that are available that look just like you would see in a clinic. [00:01:10] Erin Schwier (OT Programs): We have this ADL room that I’m sitting in, which stands for activities of daily living. It’s a mock apartment. The resources are so well-constructed and consulted specifically for our students. [00:01:21] Lynn Kilburg (OT Programs): So getting that hands-on activity early on is really critical. [00:01:24] Erin Schwier (OT Programs): We believe it’s the combination of resources that are available to students while they’re on campus learning, the ability for our faculty to create and curate really valuable learning experiences from simulation all the way to pro bono patient care that allow our students to grow and thrive within the program to help them to become the practitioners we know they can be.
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