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Clinical Education
The clinical education component of the curriculum has two components: integrated clinical experiences and 36 weeks of full-time off-campus clinical experiences. Integrated clinical experiences are part of a given course and occur in either pro-bono clinics, as an assignment in a course, or in the simulation lab. Currently, the curriculum contains four types of community clinics: for the adult and pediatric populations with neurologic conditions, persons with orthopedic conditions, for persons with amputations, and wellness.
The program’s mission is to prepare generalist practitioners and to give students an exposure to a broad range of physical therapy settings. As such, the program requires completion of three, 12-week full-time clinical experiences. Each experience will be in one of the major setting types – inpatient acute, rehabilitation (inpatient or outpatient), and outpatient. All students must complete a clinical course in each of the three major settings.
For qualifying students, pediatric rotations can replace the rehabilitation requirement on an as-available basis. Clinical education assignments are not structured to create an opportunity to visit faraway places, to allow a student to live at home, to be near a significant other, to lead to employment at a specific site, or to develop specialty skills. They are structured to give the student a well rounded clinical experience. Placements in Northern California are preferred but some outlying rotations will be necessary to fulfill the Program educational goals. Thus, students need to be prepared to attend a clinical outside the metropolitan Sacramento area on one or more clinical rotations and to arrange transportation and housing as needed for all clinical affiliations.
Timeline of Full-time Clinical Experience
1st Experience
PT695A - Clinical Experience I
12 weeks during the 6th semester
2nd Experience
PT695B - Clinical Experience II
12 weeks during the 8th semester
3rd Experience
PT695C - Clinical Experience III
12 weeks during the 9th semester
Clinical Faculty
Clinical faculty refers to all Clinical Instructors (CI), as well as Site Coordinators of Clinical Education (SCCE).
The CI is a physical therapist with at least one year of clinical experience who has volunteered to mentor and assess a physical therapy student. The SCCE is responsible for coordinating assignments and activities of students at the clinical site.
Resources for Clinical Faculty
An excellent Clinical Instructor is one who:
- Models in their practice integration of the ICF concepts and terminology and the patient management model as described in the Guide to PT Practice.
- Supportively mentors the student by reinforcing student strengths and offering constructive and timely feedback to the student in integrating academic and clinical experiences.
- Skillfully uses the clinical environment to set up appropriate learning experiences and clearly communicates all aspects of clinical education to the student, the SCCE and the DCE/ACCE.
- Accurately rates the student on the assessment tool (Web CPI) with supporting documentation, integrating a fair assessment of supervision needs, patient caseload capacity and quality of student performance.
- Models ethical and legal practice, and excellent relations with patients, family caregivers and healthcare providers.