What happens when you don’t speak the same language?
Confusion and a lack of true communication and collaboration! That’s what many academics and clinicians face when they do not use a standard PT clinical education language.
To address this common terminology issue, the
American Council of Academic Physical Therapy (ACAPT) and its National Consortium of Clinical Educators (NCCE) developed the Common Terminology Glossary for Physical Therapist Clinical Education. To
create the glossary, ACAPT researched the PT literature, engaged key stakeholders, collected extensive clinician member feedback and held in-depth discussions and debate.
In addition, the Academy of Physical Therapy Education’s (APTE)
Clinical Education Terminology Task Force of the Academy's PTA Educators SIG created the APTE Physical Therapy Clinical Education Glossary,
including PT & PTA clinical education terminology.*
During these challenging times, we must prioritize our response to the pandemic, but you may find that your graduate assistants and other staff may have time to address common terminology
updates across your PT program.
Here’s your checklist to adopt these common PT clinical education terms:
- Forward to your PT program directors and Directors of Clinical Education and ask for their support in using the terminology in your program.
- Review your educational institution’s PT program handbooks and policy/procedure manuals to update with the PT clinical education common terms.
- Ask all your PT faculty or graduate assistants to check syllabi for consistent use of the terms.
- Update your university’s PT program public website with the terms.
- Check your course names/descriptions to ensure they are consistent with the terms and update per your institutional policy.
- Ask work study students and/or graduate assistants to review and update your course materials to reflect the common terminology.
- Encourage your clinical education software providers (e.g. Exxat, Acadaware, Jun Consulting, etc.) to update their platforms with these common terms.
- Share the terms with any consortia or committees you know work with clinical partners. Ask them to link to the terminology from their emails, websites, newsletters and social media.
- Post the common terminology link on your own social media and ask it to be shared.
- Use the common clinical education terminology while engaged in discussions with faculty, clinical partners and students and educate them to use the updated language.
- Discuss the terminology with interprofessional education (IPE) groups for universal language, communication and understanding.
Recognizing that your clinical partners need to prioritize the response to the pandemic, we ask that you delay the following outreach until your clinics have time to respond:
- Send updates in letters to clinical sites and at site visits, reinforce the importance of this shared common language.
- Reach out to your clinical partners who serve as Site Coordinators of Clinical Education (SCCE) to ask that they update their email/memo signature to SCCE.
Thanks to ACAPT’s NCCE members for recommending these ways to spread the common terminology and increase consistency.
Top seven priority clinical education terms
For all the items below, refer back to the full PT clinical education glossary here.
- Site Coordinator of Clinical Education (SCCE) – reflects that clinical education occurs within varied environments. Use SCCE instead of CCCE (center coordinator of clinical education).
- Clinical Education Experience with clarifiers (e.g. full-time, part-time, etc.) is the preferred term for all experiences!
- Internship = recompense to participants in accordance with federal labor laws vs Experience = a clinical education experience that does not provide recompense.
- Full-time clinical experience (first, intermediate, terminal) – a clinical education experience in which a student is engaged for a minimum of 35 hours-per-week.
- Integrated Clinical Experience (ICE) = experiences that are organized within a curriculum and occur prior to the terminal full-time clinical experiences.
- Preceptor = someone who provides short-term specialized instruction, guidance and supervision for the PT student during a clinical education experience, but may or may not be a PT and not the clinical instructors.
- Clinical Instructor = a licensed PT with a minimum of 1 full clinical year experience responsible for directly instructing, guiding, supervising, and formally assessing the PT student during a clinical education experience.
*This glossary of terms was developed for Physical Therapist Assistant education programs as a parallel, but separate document derived from the Physical Therapist Clinical Education Glossary researched, developed and disseminated by the American Council for Academic Physical Therapy (ACAPT). Erickson M, Birkmeier M, Booth M, et al. Recommendations from the Common Terminology Panel of the American Council of Academic Physical Therapy. Phys Ther. 2018;98:754–762.
The PTA Educator’s Special Interest Group and the Clinical Education Terminology Task Force would like to acknowledge the time, effort and resources allocated by the American Council of Academic Physical Therapy (ACAPT) to create, validate and publish the Physical Therapist Clinical Education Glossary. As physical therapist assistant educators, we are sincerely grateful for this work and the opportunity to collaborate with the ACAPT Common Terminology Panel on creating terminology for physical therapist assistant clinical education.