The influence of occupational therapy students' preferred language on academic and clinical performance in a Canadian university program.

Abstract

The Occupational Therapy Program at this Canadian university is a French program however, students must be bilingual to function in English or French clinical fieldwork settings. An understanding of the role of language in successful completion of program requirements was needed to effectively support students' education. The study objectives were to identify the role of linguistic factors in students' academic and clinical performance and to provide recommendations for strategies to address areas of learning difficulty. A multimethod approach used 4 data sources: (1) Multiple Mini Interview (MMI) informal language assessment scores, (2) grade point average (GPA), (3) fieldwork evaluation reports, and (4) an online survey of program graduates. The GPA on admission and MMI scores of 140 students predicted respectively only 20% and 2% of the variation in GPA on program completion. The areas of poorest performance in failed clinical fieldwork reports were in clinical reasoning and communication competencies. Among survey respondents (n = 47), 44.5% reported that a clinical placement in their second language with related charting (51.6%) and client communication (40.9%) were the most significant difficulties encountered in the program. Clients with mental health issues (45.4%) were the most challenging population to work with, attributed to communication barriers in the students' second language. Strategies are proposed to support occupational therapy students' academic and clinical language proficiency, including conversational training courses, problem-based learning activities in students' second language, focussed teaching on the clinical reasoning process and reflective skills, and language coaching to address early signs of difficulty in clinical fieldwork.