Therapy Graduate Students Research Articles

Watch a therapist get sued: A medicolegal interprofessional simulation on rehabilitation therapy documentation

Health science educators are charged with the responsibility to teach paper and electronic medical documentation to include accuracy of documentation aligned with standards of practice and ethical principles. Characteristically, ethical principles are taught in discipline-specific curriculum. This article describes an interprofessional education (IPE) medicolegal simulation-based learning activity designed for and implemented with occupational therapy (OT) and physical therapy (PT) graduate students. Activities included watching a simulated student OT and PT co-treatment vignette, reviewing student documentation in a simulated medical chart that was co-signed by the simulated clinical supervisors, observing a live deposition with the simulated clinical supervisors by legal representation, and debriefing the simulation focusing on the Interprofessional Education Collaborative Core Competency Domain: Values and Ethics.1 The learning objectives for this simulation were for students to better understand the values and ethics of professional written and verbal communication and to be able to explain the significance of accurate medical documentation for safe and effective delivery of patient care. A reflective assignment for students to expand on their IPE experience was used to assess students. Most students provided insightful perspectives and authentic comments demonstrating a better understanding of standards of ethical conduct through written documentation. This article will provide the means to integrate an immersive medicolegal IPE simulation, focusing on the importance of medical documentation that can be modeled in respective educational and clinical programs.

Efficacy of Occupation-Based Intervention in Promoting Well-Being Among Occupational Therapy Graduate Students.

Occupational therapy graduate students report poor well-being during their educational experience. This convergent mixed-methods study (quantitative approach presented) examined the effectiveness of an occupation-based intervention in promoting well-being. Forty-one entry-level doctorate students (intervention = 18, control = 23) completed four standardized measures at three timepoints. The manualized intervention included six 45-minute virtual synchronous sessions, once per week. Data were analyzed using two-way mixed analysis of variance (ANOVA). Statistically significant differences in well-being (p = .024, = .09), self-compassion (p = .006, = .12), and engagement in meaningful occupations (p = .014, = .10) between groups, indicating intervention effectiveness. Intervention study participants were self-compassionate and intentional about promoting their well-being; therefore, increasing their participation in a variety of meaningful occupations moved them toward more occupational balance and improved well-being. This occupation-based intervention could be offered to promote student well-being through engagement in meaningful occupations.

Examining the Benefits of an Educational Blog for Supporting Student Mental Health: A Quasi-Experimental Study

This quasi-experimental study examined the use of a blog as a mental health resource for students. The main objective was to determine if occupational therapy graduate students benefited from using a resource to support their mental health. A purpose-specific survey was used to assess student perceptions. Sixty-five students participated in the survey and 73% of those students reported the blog helped them to manage their mental health. The results indicate that using a blog as a strategy to support student mental health is beneficial. This study is limited by a small homogenous sample; however, serves as a resource for educators.

Changes in the self-efficacy and communication of nursing, occupational therapy, and speech-language pathology students participating in a simulated patient simulation

BackgroundThis study aimed to examine changes in self-efficacy and communication of nursing, occupational therapy, and speech-language pathology students through participation in an interprofessional patient simulation. Methods: Twenty-two occupational therapy graduate students, 16 speech-language-pathology graduate students, and 25 undergraduate nursing students participated. Participants completed the Self-Efficacy for Interprofessional Experiential Learning (SE-12), the Interprofessional Collaboration Scale (ICS) pre and post simulation, and an open-ended post-simulation questionnaire on self-perceived stress levels. ResultsEach discipline group demonstrated significant changes in perceived self-efficacy (p < .001) and communication (p < .001). Analysis of the open-ended questions revealed a consistent pattern in reducing stress levels from before the simulation to the post-simulation assessment. ConclusionIncorporating interprofessional patient simulation experiences into pre-professional health programs significantly enhances interprofessional communication skills and self-efficacy and reduces self-reported stress, serving as a valuable tool for preparing students to collaborate effectively in interdisciplinary teams to provide high-quality patient care.

COVID-19 Effects on Well-being and Academic Performance in Physical Therapy Graduate Students: A Cross-Sectional Study

COVID-19 Effects on Well-being and Academic Performance in Physical Therapy Graduate Students: A Cross-Sectional Study

Community art therapy (CAT): learning from art therapy graduate students’ perceptions

ABSTRACT Background In recent years, therapeutic approaches in the field of art therapy have gone beyond clinical models to include community models that emphasize the potential of art to influence communities in distress and encourage art therapists to expand their therapeutic interventions and extend their professional boundaries. Aims: This qualitative study was designed to better understand the experiences of art therapy graduate students who implemented community art therapy (CAT) projects during their internship after taking courses on CAT. It examined how they experienced the transition from the familiar clinical model to the community model. Results Five main themes emerged from the analysis: the students' perceptions of the differences between CAT and the familiar clinical art therapy setting, the specific role of the community art therapist, the role of the art, a sense of belonging to the community, and the power of the group in CAT. Conclusions The artistic process in CAT contribute to the co-creation of community knowledge through metaphorical expressions of identity and belonging. The students experienced the role of the community art therapist as a continuous dialectic between intervener-joiner who makes an impact and is also affected by the process personally. Engaging in a shared examination of the training of CAT allowed the educators and the students to achieve a deeper understanding of the challenges and the transformation required. Implications for practice CAT should be taught as a separate topic in art therapy programs, and CAT professionals should be trained to support and supervise students and therapists. Plain-language summary In recent years, the field of art therapy has undergone significant changes from traditional clinical to community models that emphasise the potential of art to influence communities in distress and encourage art therapists to expand their therapeutic interventions, extend their professional boundaries, and at times become social activists. This study examined 11 art therapy students’ reports on their experiences as facilitators of a community art therapy (CAT) intervention in communities of their choice. The students wrote a one-page reflection on each community intervention and completed the Helpful Aspects of Therapy (HAT) questionnaire that explores helpful and hindering events in each intervention. Five themes emerged: the students` experiences of the differences between traditional art therapy and the CAT setting in terms of the specific role of the art therapist, the role of the art, a sense of belonging to the community, and the power of the group in CAT. The students indicated that the role of the community art therapist involves a continuous dialectic between participants and the facilitator, who can make an impact but is also affected by the process personally. Overall, CAT should be taught as a separate topic in art therapy programmes and CAT professionals should be trained to support and supervise the work of students and therapists.

Can Residents With Late-Stage Dementia Still Engage?

Institutionalized persons with dementia often lack access to meaningful activity, which can lead to agitation, loneliness, and depression. Engagement in activity may improve negative symptoms but is difficult in most settings. In this study, we investigated the degree to which the Reading Buddies Program, in which occupational therapy graduate students read books with residents with dementia, engaged residents. We further assessed whether the level of engagement was affected by various parameters, including those related to interaction, environment, attention, attitude, and activity. The primary outcome measure was engagement percentage-duration of time the book was read divided by duration of time the person with dementia engaged with the book. As expected, increased attention, attitude, and activity parameters were associated with increased engagement. None of the environmental parameters significantly affected engagement. Overall, we found that reading with persons with dementia led to a very high level of engagement and appeared to reduce negative symptoms.

Exploring the relationships among art therapy students' burnout, practicum stress, and teacher support.

This study examines how teacher support and practicum stress affect art therapy graduate students' burnout. A total of 125 master's and doctoral students from art therapy graduate schools in Korea participated in the study. We conducted a correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis to explore the relationship between the variables. The correlation analysis results showed that burnout, practicum stress, and social support are significantly interrelated. The regression analysis results indicated that practicum stress increases burnout while social support decreases it. When we used the sub-factors of social support as independent variables, we found that professor support rather than the support of colleagues or family significantly reduced burnout. When we divided the perceived teacher support into emotional support and academic support, our analysis identified that academic support was more important than emotional support to reduce students' burnout. Art therapy students' practicum stress can cause psychological burnout, while teacher support-especially academic support-can lower the possibility of experiencing such burnout.

Art Therapy Graduate Students’ Mandalas Based on Kellogg’s Great Round

This quantitative study investigated whether a “mandala set” consisting of 143 mandalas drawn by art therapy graduate students depicts archetypal patterns and stages as defined by Kellogg’s “Archetypal Stages of the Great Round of the Mandala” and if these patterns explain events in their professional development. Eight standard mandalas were included to evaluate the reliability of the raters. The results demonstrate that all patterns were present but that seven archetypal patterns representing six stages occurred most frequently: stages 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, and 11. These stages relate to career directions, professional identity, struggles, untapped potential, transitions and change, fragmentation, and chaos, and directions. The process could be used for assessing graduate students’ professional development.

Occupational Therapy Graduate Students’, Recent Graduates’, and Educators’ Perceptions of the Value of Anatomy Knowledge

Occupational Therapy Graduate Students’, Recent Graduates’, and Educators’ Perceptions of the Value of Anatomy Knowledge

Comparing graduate occupational therapy students’ perceived time use, temporality, and tempo of occupational participation before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT The study of time use, habits, routines, and rituals is significant to occupational science inquiry, with established research techniques and numerous published reports documenting the temporal nature of human occupational behavior. Occupational therapy graduate students are therefore instructed on time use analysis methods. In a large public American university graduate program, self-evaluation of time use is used as a learning strategy, providing students rich opportunities to apply what they learn in class to gain a better understanding of their own lives. Following didactic instruction, the students in an introductory theory course were asked to document and reflect upon their time use on a recent day or week in spring 2019. In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic prompted a statewide stay-at-home order and widespread school closures, including the conversion of all coursework to alternative online methods. In this context, the students in the following cohort completed the time use documentation and reflection assignment in spring 2020. The data from these assignments provide a unique opportunity to compare time use in the midst of a global pandemic to time use in the prior year. Anonymous data were compared between graduate student cohorts from the spring 2020 semester (n = 59) and spring 2019 (n = 58). Data were compiled and analyzed using NVivo software for qualitative analysis, and SPSS software for quantitative investigation. Results indicate that students attempted to self-organize their time with an emphasis on maintaining or correcting perceived shifts in temporarily and tempo. Students cited concern for their health and reported adjusting patterns of occupational engagement in studying, sleep, rest, and community mobility. Future research should query students’ motivations and feelings related to time use and perception of time.

The Development and Evaluation of a Pediatric Interprofessional Education (IPE) Experience for Occupational and Physical Therapy Graduate Students

Interprofessional competence is needed to improve health care outcomes. The aim of this paper is to describe the development of theoretically grounded interprofessional education (IPE) experiences to advance interprofessional competencies for occupational and physical therapy doctoral students. In addition, a pretest/postest survey was designed to determine the participants’ perceptions of knowledge attainment, roles, and attitudes. Two cohorts of students (N = 115) completed surveys pre and post IPE experiences. Statistically significant changes were found on perception of roles and knowledge attainment. Additional studies are needed to determine if IPE leads to behavioral changes in practice and improves patient outcomes.

A Practice-Based Interprofessional Emergent Writing Intervention: Impacts on Graduate Students and Preschoolers

Despite the importance of collaboration in schools, few studies have examined interprofessional education (IPE) interventions for graduate speech-language pathology (SLP) students designed to prepare them with the skills necessary to effectively work on school-based teams. The current pilot study implemented a five-week practice-based IPE intervention with six SLP graduate students and three occupational therapy (OT) graduate students. Three SLP students were randomly assigned to the ‘unpaired’ condition and delivered emergent writing activities independently to a small group of preschoolers (n = 10). The other three SLPs were each randomly assigned an OT student to collaborate with in a ‘paired’ condition and conducted the same activities together with their assigned small groups of preschoolers (n = 11). Graduate students’ emergent writing knowledge and interprofessional competencies were supported throughout the study by facilitated discussions and structured debrief sessions with their clinical educators using the DEAL model of critical reflection. Results indicated that SLP students from both conditions demonstrated positive gains in emergent writing knowledge, but the paired SLP students had a greater gain in self-reported interprofessional competencies. Preschoolers in both conditions demonstrated improvement on emergent writing tasks. Implications of practice-based IPE interventions for both graduate students and children are discussed.

The Development of a Well-Being Program for Occupational Therapy Graduate Students

The Development of a Well-Being Program for Occupational Therapy Graduate Students

Assessing Information Literacy Skills and Library Anxiety of First-Year Occupational Therapy Graduate Students

Assessing Information Literacy Skills and Library Anxiety of First-Year Occupational Therapy Graduate Students

Occupational Therapy Student Perceptions of Wellness: Focus Group Findings

Despite the evidence of significant consequences stemming from the intense demands on students, most graduate-level programs have insufficiently considered components of students’ wellness. Thus, the purpose of this research study was two-pronged: 1) to evaluate current occupational therapy students’ perceptions of wellness and 2) to explore student perceptions on using communities of practice as a program delivery method to enhance wellness. A qualitative study design was selected to gather experiences and feedback from occupational therapy graduate students. Participants were recruited via email from a convenience sample of a large, research-based Midwestern occupational therapy program. Participants attended one focus group and completed a brief demographic survey. The focus group data was audio-recorded and later transcribed by research coordinators. Transcript-based analysis was used and after transcription was completed, constant comparison analysis was used to determine final themes. In all, fourteen participants engaged in the study. Three main themes emerged: 1) wellness is a holistic concept, 2) graduate school is a novel experience, and 3) a group educational program that meets regularly could be beneficial for enhancing wellness. The results illustrate that occupational therapy graduate students both value their wellness and are interested in prioritizing its promotion and maintenance. With few comprehensive wellness programs currently available for graduate students, the information gathered from this study provides further support for these services and resources to be made readily available. Furthermore, the results from this study may guide program design, promoting greater wellness in occupational therapy students, and potentially students across other graduate-level disciplines.

Revisiting the attitudes toward health care teams scale: Developing a short version for graduate health care education

ABSTRACT As interprofessional education (IPE) becomes more common in student training programs, reliable and valid scales are needed to measure students’ perceptions of the experience. The Attitudes Toward Health Care Teams Scale (ATHCTS) was developed to measure students’ attitudes toward IPE programs using 14 items loaded on two factors. In this paper, we used the ATHCTS scale to assess the effects of a three-semester long health care IPE program on three cohorts of nurse practitioner, occupational therapy, and physical therapy graduate students with three measurement points across two university sites (N = 367). Confirmatory factor analysis on the baseline data of the first cohort revealed unacceptable fit indices; in addition, not all items were applicable, some items had double or low factor loadings, and positively and negatively worded items loaded on separate factors, indicating potential answering bias, and both factors were highly correlated. We thus conducted further item analyses and propose a short version of the ATHCTS using six items with one reverse coded item, describing the quality of interprofessional care in a more parsimonious way. The factor structure of the six-item version was tested using confirmatory factor analysis on the baseline data of cohort 2 and 3. Results were compared to the 14-item version, and fit indices confirmed a better fit to the data than the old version. Using the shortened scale, student attitudes were compared over the course of the program and between both sites. Results showed that site 2 students’ attitudes remained very positive over time, while site 1 students’ attitudes declined significantly. We suggest this finding is related to the consistency of team membership at site 2 and discuss the implications for IPE program design.

Influence of Art Therapy Students’ Art Practice on Their Professional Identity and Career Commitment

Art therapy students’ art practice might influence professional identity and career commitment. Art therapy graduate students (n = 202) in South Korea participated in a survey. This study introduces the Art Practice Scale and associated exploratory factor analysis, which identified 2 subvariables: art competency and attitude toward artwork. The correlation analysis results with the My Vocational Situation Vocational Identity Scale and Career Commitment Measurement showed that art practice, professional identity, and career commitment are positively interrelated. The regression analysis results showed that art practice and study period significantly influenced career commitment, and art practice and age influenced professional identity. This study provides empirical evidence to support that art therapy students’ art practice can have a significant effect on their professional growth.

Educational Perspectives: Integrating a Student Post-Stroke Clinic within a First-Year Occupational Therapy Kinesiology Course

Purpose: In many occupational therapy graduate programs, student experiences with actual patient evaluation and intervention typically occur following several semesters of didactic instruction. We explored the impact of an early immersive and reflective hands-on patient experience on student learning and clinical skill development. Method: Following participation in five task-specific occupational therapy clinical sessions that were embedded into an applied kinesiology course, students performed reflections on the experience. These reflections included thoughts on kinesiology course content and clinical skill development through patient sessions over the semester. Results: A qualitative thematic analysis of student reflections was conducted. Findings reflected themes of improvement in observation skills, intervention abilities and communication. Conclusion: Early reflective and immersive clinical experiences may be helpful in the reinforcement of course content and in the development of clinical skills of occupational therapy graduate students prior to full intervention content exposure.

Measuring the Effect of Sexual Health Education Training in Professionals: Structure of the Sexual Health Education for Professionals Scale (SHEPS) Among Marriage and Family Therapy Graduate Students.

Marriage and family therapists and sexual health therapists are likely to receive training in graduate school that prepares them to encounter sexual concerns among clients, but there are few standard ways to assess the efficacy of this training. The Sexual Health Education for Professionals Scale (SHEPS) was developed to address this deficit. In this preliminary study, 163 marriage and family therapy graduate students completed the SHEPS prior to starting a graduate course in assessing and treating sexual concerns. Exploratory factor analyses indicate that the SHEPS subscales have good psychometric properties. The Skills and Knowledge subscales have factors labeled Typical Clients, Special Clients, Conservative Clients, and Ethically Complicated Clients. The Attitudes subscale had factors called General Sexual Attitudes, Valuing Sexual Health Training, Open to Providing Sexual Help, and Conservatism. This new instrument may be used to assess education and training of sexual health and marriage and family therapists. Larger sample sizes and longitudinal studies are needed in future.