Abstract:

Introduction:
The clinical internships are an essential element of the development of professional competences in Physiotherapy. They are carried out in clinical settings with real patients and supervised by professional physiotherapists, who also act as clinical tutors. In the Physiotherapy Degree of the University of Valencia, the first ever clinical internship of the program is scheduled at the beginning of the third-year course. Students refer to be eager to start them since they want to practice in real circumstances what they had already learnt. Given that professional training is, in part, context dependent and mediated by meaningful learning, the students´ perception of their first clinical experience is worth knowing. Moreover, students’ satisfaction often depends on clinical tutors who have the necessary knowledge and skills to support and teach students in the clinical environment. Furthermore, clinical tutors need to be enthusiastic and approachable. Therefore, our purpose was to study the Physiotherapy students´ satisfaction with their first ever clinical internships.

Methods:
A survey type study was performed. Students registered in the third-year subject “Clinical Practicum I” during the academic year 2019-2020 were invited to complete the survey immediately after each internship period. An ad-hoc questionnaire was developed to assess the students´ satisfaction with their clinical tutor (part 1: 9 items), the clinical placement (part 2: 6 items) and their global experience (part 3: 5 items). Each item was scored on a 4-level Likert scale and an average score of each part of the questionnaire was calculated. Also, students rated on a 10-point scale their global satisfaction with their clinical tutor, clinical placement, level of acquired knowledge and general experience. For each part of the questionnaire, a descriptive study was performed and internal consistency was determined by using the coefficient α (Cronbach´s alpha).

Results:
Of the registered students, 141 (97.2%) participated in the survey (50.3% women, mean age 22.5 ± 4.1 years). A total of 84 clinical placements (11 public and 73 private) and 110 clinical tutors participated in our students´ clinical training. Reliability of each part of the questionnaire ranged from good to excellent (part 1: α = 0.905; part 2: α = 0.777; part 3: α = 0.781). Global satisfaction with the clinical tutor, clinical placement, level of acquired knowledge and general experience was highly scored (8.9±1.25; 8.23±1.33, 8.5±1.22 and 8.8±1.21, respectively). Each part of the questionnaire was also highly rated (mean value of 3.58 ± 0.5 for the clinical tutor; 3.3 ± 0.54 for the clinical placement; and 3.58 ± 0.46 for the global experience). The items with the lowest scores were those related to the volume of patients and the variety of pathologies of the clinical settings (2.99 ± 0.96 and 2.97± 0.9, respectively). Contrarily, the instruction of the clinical tutors and their role as a professional model were the highest rated items (3.74 ± 0.54 and 3.73± 0.54, respectively).

Conclusions:
According to the results, our Physiotherapy students are highly satisfied with their first clinical internship in terms of clinical instruction, placement, acquired knowledge and general experience.

Acknowledgements:
This work was partially supported by an educational innovation grant of the Vicerectorat d’Ocupació i Programes Formatius of the University of Valencia (UV-SFPIE_PID19-1095896).

Keywords:

Physiotherapy, Clinical Internships, Satisfaction.