CHCS - Perspectives Winter/Spring 2016

46 • NOVA SOUTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY W hat does spasticity feel like? What does ataxia look like? How do you examine and treat a patient with a neurological diagnosis? These are questions physical therapy students face as they begin the neurological curriculum in the Hybrid D.P.T. (D.P.T.) program. While many students start the D.P.T. program having volunteered in outpatient clinics, few have observed individuals with stroke or neurological diagnoses. Being able to visualize and feel movement impairments is critical in neurological physical therapy. If a picture or video is worth 1,000 words, an experience with a real patient is worth 1 million words. To demystify neurologic physical therapy, the Hybrid D.P.T. program brings the clinic, in the form of real patients, to the classroom—a concept we call integrated patient experiences (IPE). IPE were created because most students work part time or full time until they start their full-time clinical rotations in year four, making it impractical to stop work for four weeks in order to attend clinical internships in years one through three. NSU-Tampa’s IPE provides frequent exposure to patients during its weekend institutes throughout the curriculum. Full-time clinicians serve as lab assistants during these sessions to ensure close supervision and to provide timely student feedback. On-campus IPE occurs across the curriculum beginning in year one during the Exercise Physiology course, when students perform cardiovascular risk-factor screenings and assessments with friends or family. Other on-campus experiences occur in Clinical Skills I and II, Patient/Client Manage- ment Post Amputation, Motor Control Across the Life Span, and Pediatrics. Recognizing the importance of exposing students to practice environments like hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and outpatient departments, the program also has off-campus integrated clinical experiences (ICE) within the didactic curriculum that take place around the weekend institutes so as not to disrupt the students’ work schedules, and to avoid the cost of additional plane tickets and hotel accommodations in Tampa. In the neurological courses, students spend 3½ half weeks in online education watching instructional videos and lectures, scoring standardized measures, and performing class assignments. During the four days on campus each month, they spend the first two days refining their skills using paper and video cases and practicing on each other, followed by IPE with real volunteers who have neurological disorders. Volunteers benefit from the experience because they receive input from seasoned faculty members and feel a sense of accomplishment by teaching students to see them as people and not a disease. During IPE, students manage the care of volunteer patients and apply class concepts to the patients, receiving helpful feedback from faculty members. These sessions are active learning experiences, which Hybrid D.P.T. Program Brings the Patient to the Classroom Physical Therapy TAMPA BY ROBIN GALLEY, D.P.T., PT, OCS, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, AND JOANN GALLICHIO, D.SC. , M.S., PT, NCS, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR