Learning challenges in Physical Therapy, Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences, and Occupational Therapy undergraduate programs during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Alessandra Giannella Samelli, Carla Gentile Matas, Naomi Kondo Nakagawa and 2 others
PMID 37403866WHAT IT FOUND
PT, OT, and SLP students and their professors mostly preferred in-person learning and rated it essential.
They saw some remote-learning benefits, but students rated professional and communication skill gains lower than professors did.
Key findings
01In-person learning was preferred by 84 students and 17 professors.
02Students and professors rated in-person learning as essential, with mean scores 4.52 and 4.65 on a 1 to 5 scale.
03Students gave lower mean scores than professors for remote learning improving professional skills (2.70 versus 3.40) and communication skills (2.62 versus 3.30).
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
It was done at a single university, so it may not reflect other programs. Only 98 of 369 enrolled students answered, a 26.6% response rate, so non-responders may have had different views. Only 20 of 36 professors answered, so professor views may also be incomplete. It asked about perceptions, not measured clinical skill, patient outcomes, or actual learning. Students and professors from Physical Therapy, Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences, and Occupational Therapy were reported together, so discipline-specific results cannot be separated. To protect anonymity, sociodemographic data were not collected, so socioeconomic factors could not be examined. The survey happened during the pandemic, and practical courses were temporarily canceled, so the comparison may not reflect planned hybrid teaching.
Declared interests
No funding source or conflict-of-interest statement is provided in the supplied text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that remote online learning is proven ineffective for training PT, OT, or SLP clinicians. This survey reports perceptions from 98 students and 20 professors at one university, and it did not measure clinical skill or patient outcomes.