Student benefits

Benefits of Student Clinical Education in Private Practice

Student benefits:

Although the consistency of and variety of hands-on student clinical experiences may at times have limitations in this field, private practice as a clinical education environment provides many valuable learning opportunities for a student’s professional growth and development.  Some of these opportunities include:

• access to a diverse range of contexts and delivery systems in which to apply a variety of skills e.g home environmental or work-site assessments, vocational rehabilitation, case-management, home or school based paediatric services; physical rehabilitation, ergonomic solutions, workplace wellness, counseling and more.
• experience of the business side of community health care provision
• skills in networking, consultation, group education, home and environmental assessments, functional assessments, and intervention
• awareness of working within budgetary and legislative constraints
• professional reasoning and development of professional relationships for successful creation, running and promotion of a business
• development of formal report writing skills
• involvement in administrative projects such as marketing strategies, continuing education, updating of resources.
• observe and spend time with other professionals in private practice and within the health care delivery system such as rehabilitation case managers.
• develop an identity as an occupational therapist and an understanding of the occupational therapy process, often in an area of specialty                                                                                                               (Potts et al., 1998; Rorke, 2005).