Physiotherapy Students’ and Clinical Educators’ Experiences During Clinical Practice: A Narrative Review

Abstract

Background: Clinical education is a key component to learning in the health professions as it facilitates socialisation in a practice community and provides opportunities for students to actively build and integrate their theoretical and practical knowledge. Aims: The study investigated the experiences and perceptions of physiotherapy students and clinical educators during clinical rotators. Methods: Information relevant to the study was searched in Google scholar, Medline and PubMed databases. Information was gathered through identification of studies and Journal articles published from the year 2000 to 2019. The search terms included key word such as using all possible combinations of the index terms Physiotherapy students, clinical educators, clinical practice, and experiences. Results: Key roles and attributes of clinical educators were identified, which included the clinical educators’ dual roles as a facilitator and assessor of learning. Physiotherapy students reported a high perception of preparedness for clinical rotations with low confidence levels at the beginning of the rotations and improved confidence levels at the end of the rotations. Conclusions: An ideal clinical education experience is one that takes place in a learning atmosphere that allows for establishing a mutually beneficial student-supervisor relationship. A desirable clinical experience is one that can facilitate the connection between theory and practice and is subjected to ongoing peer evaluation for quality. Roles and attributes of a good clinical student from the clinical educators’ perspective should be identified to help the students meet the clinical educators’ expectations and consolidate theory into practice.