Good Practice in Australian Physiotherapy Education
Integration of legal and ethical issues into complex case scenarios
21 April 2009
Clinical Conference is a 10CP capstone course undertaken by students in the last/final semester of studies prior to the final 8 weeks of clinical placements. The course aims to fully integrate the student's prior learning in exercise science with evidence-based physiotherapy knowledge and skills using complex clinical cases. These cases are complicated by 'real-life' moral, ethical and medico-legal issues. The students study four separate cases in detail and in a holistic manner, examining the progress of patients through a continuum of care (eg, early diagnosis, acute care, sub-acute needs, rehabilitation and through to re-integration back in to the community). Sessions are led by various members of different disciplines from the healthcare team that might be involved with such cases. The cases are updated and modified each year depending on medical advances or social change.
Year Level : (Year 5 - final year)
At the end of the course the student should be able to:
- present, discuss and justify management strategies for a variety of complex clinical case presentations with the emphasis on evidence based practice;
- justify diagnostic decisions and management strategies on the basis of clinical assessment findings, and clinical, including propositional and non-propositional knowledge and scientific knowledge;
- demonstrate an ability to evaluate research literature and apply results to pertinent clinical situations;
- discuss advanced diagnostic and therapeutic concepts in physiotherapy practice;
- identify medico-legal and ethical issues arising from clinical situations discussed.
- Aspects of the teaching and learning practice which make it particularly effective.
- Use of complex 'real-life' cases that incorporate specific medico-legal and ethical issues that may not have arisen in course work or clinical placements previously.
- Use of clinical experts to lead 'in-class' discussions.
- Incorporation of assessment items designed to lead students to identify case-specific issues and to bring together the students' entire prior learning in physiotherapy AND exercise science.
n/a
Course evaluations and individual teaching evaluations. Feedback from speakers.
The course has been offered twice (in 2003 and 2004). The following refers to the most recent offering in 2004. Further feedback from 2003 is available on request.
2004 - Teaching evaluation
In 2004, the following questions were posed to students in evaluating each speaker in 5005PES - Clinical Conference:
- Relevant topic content to the case study
- Applicable content for future clinical needs
- Good speaker would like to hear more from them in future
- Scale: 1 = Strongly Disagree, 2 = Disagree, 3 = Undecided, 4 = Agree, 5 = Strongly Agree
- Overall Mean for all speakers (out of total of 5) = 4.2
- 2004 - Course Evaluation:
- Excellent feedback has been obtained in both offerings of the course thus far, eg, in 2004:
-
- "I thoroughly enjoyed this course, the chance to integrate both degrees is great and I think more of this should be done. A good mix of cases was used."
- "Great structure to the subject; good idea with the cases and continuing process of management."
- "Very good administration, course structured well; Good to have experts from different fields talk."
- Sample of specific questions and responses from course evaluation (Likert scale as above, 1-5):
- The various aspects of this course worked well together to help me to learn: Mean - 4.1
- The level of the course was appropriate to my background. Mean - 4.2
- This course was relevant to my vocational/professional needs. Mean - 4.2
- The course content helped me to develop skills relevant to my professional needs. Mean 4.2
- The overall workload in this course was reasonable. Mean - 4.1
- In this course the convenor encouraged students to reflect about what they had learnt. Mean - 4.2
- In this course I felt that the teachers respected me as an individual and as a learner. Mean - 4.2
- This course helped me to further develop problem-solving skills. Mean - 4.1
- The content of this course was clearly related to the objectives stated in the course outline. Mean - 4.0
Based on 2004 student and speaker feedback for Clinical Conference, a new case will be developed in 2005 to address an identified gap in knowledge.
Based on reflections by the Course Convenor, and student feedback, the final medico-legal written assignment will be replaced by an in-class debate with specific topics related to medico-legal and ethical issues.
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