Discover our Physical Therapy Programs at USAHS
Physical therapists are experts in movement, and at the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences (USAHS), most of the faculty are practicing clinicians first. Faculty including Rosie DeFeo, Gabriel Somarriba, Miguel Garcia, Caprice Quinones and Christine Salmon keep treating patients, which keeps their skills and evidence-based treatments current.
That practice comes straight back into the classroom as context for students and shapes a student-first approach in which faculty see students as future colleagues. The program also stresses early exposure: simulation that mimics settings outside school, plus contact with actual patients while students are still learning. Students are often surprised by how quickly that contact begins, and it carries into clinical internships.
Prospective PT students get a compact overview of the program’s teaching philosophy and the goal behind it: graduates who are ready to work.
Transcript
Discover our Physical Therapy Programs at USAHS
[00:00:00] Rosie DeFeo (PT Faculty): We are the experts of movement. Our biggest role is to assess how a patient is moving throughout their daily life and support them for continued independence. [00:00:09] Gabriel Somarriba (PT Faculty): Very few careers you get to spend this amount of time with, with patients. [00:00:13] Rosie DeFeo (PT Faculty): Our goal at the end of the day is to help our patients fulfill their life roles in the best way that they can and as independently as they can. [00:00:22] Gabriel Somarriba (PT Faculty): You become not only their physical therapist, but you become part of their family for that, for that plan of care. [00:00:30] Miguel Garcia (PT Faculty): That’s one of the most unique things about our university is that the majority of our professors are clinicians first. We’re all physical therapists. [00:00:39] Caprice Quinones (PT Faculty): That makes all the difference, to be honest with you. That keeps our skills refreshed. We use, like, the latest evidence-based treatments. [00:00:46] Miguel Garcia (PT Faculty): It provides an immense amount of context for our students. [00:00:49] Christine Salmon (PT Faculty): When I treat patients, I’ll come back and I’ll have something else to tell the student. [00:00:53] Caprice Quinones (PT Faculty): We are educating the future PTs of our profession. A lot of these students, I always tell them, like, “You’re my student right now, but in the future, you’re going to be my colleague.” [00:01:02] Miguel Garcia (PT Faculty): We are student first, that whatever it is that we do, we put their goals and their values before everything else. [00:01:10] Christine Salmon (PT Faculty): We all want our students to do well. Like, we, we come in ready to go. [00:01:17] Gabriel Somarriba (PT Faculty): Our goal is to really immerse every student with the simulated experience that mimics the, the world outside of the academic setting. [00:01:25] Rosie DeFeo (PT Faculty): We want to provide our students with as much patient real-life experience as possible. [00:01:29] Gabriel Somarriba (PT Faculty): And that’s something that, that is, that is very unique. [00:01:33] Miguel Garcia (PT Faculty): Being exposed to real-life patients so that they can see what it is that they’re going to do upon graduation. [00:01:39] Caprice Quinones (PT Faculty): Providing that opportunity while they’re still in school is very valuable because then it translates to their clinical internships as well. [00:01:45] Miguel Garcia (PT Faculty): The feedback that I always get from the students is how incredible it is that they’re able to interact so quickly with real patients. They’re able to build those skills, and they do truly get a sense of what it is that we’re trying to do as far as putting them first, giving them the, the most exceptional experience that they could have before going into the real world and treating patients. [00:02:04] Christine Salmon (PT Faculty): They are work-ready
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