Occupational Therapy Practice Education Collaborative - Queensland

Clinical educator benefits

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Benefits of Student Clinical Education in Private Practice

Clinical Educator benefits:

  • sharing of new ideas
  • opportunity to learn about current education trends and techniques, and evidence-based practice. e.g. you could ask the student to conduct a literature review as a project (Doubt, Paterson & O’Riordan, 2004; Rorke, 2005).
  • addition to the information resources of the business e.g set the student the task of developing resources for you such as client manuals, brochures, education programs and occupational therapy resource materials using IT skills such as developing power-point presentations (Rorke, 2005).
  • assist clinician’s work-load e.g students can provide draft reports, perform follow up phone calls, write correspondence letters to clients and assist with file management.
  • students add a certain level of enthusiasm to clinical practice
  • students can potentially provide longer client consultations or provide extra services for free or at a lower cost e.g: follow up services to assess success of home modifications or ergonomic interventions; interim student consultations between scheduled practitioner appointments.
  • improve clinician’s feelings of confidence and expertise and develop personal skills in clinical education
  • improve the overall quality of clinician’s work, e.g: you could get the student to assist you with quality assurance activities.
  • decrease feelings of professional isolation and provide companionship
  • gain valuable professional development hours
  • support the future of the occupational therapy profession
  • opportunity to model sound professional and ethical behaviour
  • gain the reward of seeing student learn and improve
  • provides a professional challenge
  • some universities offer a recognition to recognise the invaluable contribution to student education and competency development that clinicians provide by way of providing student clinical placements at their facility.