Date Presented Accepted for AOTA INSPIRE 2021 but unable to be presented due to online event limitations.
OT programs include practice education that is a vital aspect of professional practice preparation. The Community–Academia Student Tutoring (CAST) program was developed to enhance OT students’ perceived readiness for their practice placement. The results of the study revealed that the CAST is a useful model of a prefieldwork program for fostering students’ feelings of competency and readiness for their practice placement.
Primary Author and Speaker: Miri Tal-Saban
Additional Authors and Speakers: Naomi Weintraub
BACKGROUND: The objective of occupational therapy programmes is to prepare students to become competent entry-level occupational therapy professionals. To this end, the educational programmes are usually comprised of theoretical studies and professional practice. These components are designed to provide the basic knowledge and competencies required of students for their practice education and future practice. Yet, studies have reported that students often encounter a dissonance between their formal professional education and their feeling of readiness for their practice placement.
PURPOSE: To evaluate the effectiveness of the ‘Community-Academia Student Tutoring’ (CAST) programme for enhancing occupational therapy students’ perceived readiness for their practice placement, thus reducing their feeling of anxiety.
DESIGN: The study design is experimental.
METHODS:
PARTICIPANTS: The study included 84 third-year undergraduate occupational therapy students, between the ages of 21–35 years. The sample consisted of two cohorts: (a) 43 students who participated in the CAST programme (henceforth, the CAST group; M age = 24.24, SD = 1.17), of whom 97.6% were females; and (b) 41students who were in the control group (M age = 24.37, SD = 2.41), of whom 93.3% were females.
INSTRUMENTS: Student Self-Competency and Readiness for Fieldwork questionnaire (SCARF; Tal-Saban, Pereg, & Weintraub, 2012). The SCARF was developed for the purpose of this study to evaluate students’ feelings of self-competency and readiness for the practice placement. The SCARF consists of two parts. Part A relates to the students’ demographic background and practice placement. Part B includes 31 items relating to five aspects required of students during their practice placement, and later, as occupational therapy practitioners: (a) Evaluation Competency; (b) Intervention Competency; (c) Communication with Patients; (d) Students’ Self-Awareness; and (e) Communication with Supervisors.
RESULTS: The relationship between students’ reported anxiety and the SCARF’s components and total scores revealed a low to moderate significant correlation (p < .05) Significant differences were found between the groups in two of the five SCARF components with a low effect size: Evaluation, F(1,80) = 3.68, p = .03, = .044; and Communication with Patients, F(1,80) = 4.60, p = .02, = .054.).
CONCLUSION: Occupational therapy students often feel unprepared for their practice education. This may enhance their feeling of anxiety and affect their performance during this experience. To address this problem, we developed the CAST programme, and examined its efficacy in enhancing students’ perceived competency and readiness for their practice placement. Results showed that the CAST was a useful model of a pre fieldwork programme for fostering feelings of competency and readiness to engage in meaningful and suitable communication with clients during students’ practice education. Students also felt more confident in basic evaluation activities, even though their level of anxiety was not less than their peers, who did not participate in such a programme. These findings reinforce the importance of engaging occupational therapy students in a community-based pre-fieldwork programme during their first year of studies.
References
Coppard, B. M., & Dickerson, A. (2007). A descriptive review of occupational therapy education. The American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 61(6), 672-677. https://search.proquest.com/docview/231969588?accountid=14546
Tal-Saban, M., & Weintraub, N. (2018). Effectiveness of the Community–Academia Student Tutoring (CAST) program in enhancing students’ practice placement readiness. British Journal of Occupational Therapy, 82(4), 220-226. https://sdoi.org/10.1177/0308022618800179
