HISTORY
Initiated at the October 2011 ASAHP annual conference, CETF came together to address what some saw as an impending crisis in clinical education. Each discipline faced its own set of challenges, but overall, ASAHP deans and faculty described an increasing tension between the maintenance and growth of allied health academic programs, and the availability and affordability constraints of clinical fieldwork placements. The tension continues to the present and provides many productive opportunities for development.
Early discussions focused on payment for clinical education – Who was paying? Who was charging? What were the effects on academic budgets and costs to students? How could schools maintain a reasonable fee structure? What policies did schools want to pursue?
A related area was investigation of alternatives to traditional fieldwork placements as strategies to manage the need for students’ clinical education experiences amidst shrinking health care institutional access. Task force members shared their experiences – use of simulation, collaboration between schools, campus-based clinics, development of priority MOUs with health care systems, interprofessional education (IPE), use of adjunct faculty to supervise students in the clinical setting, advanced lab practice in the classroom, etc. These early efforts led to CETF’s first study into expectations of accrediting bodies regarding clinical education requirements.
MAJOR ACCOMPLISHMENTS
The CETF has been pleased to respond to ASAHP Board requests and to make meaningful contributions about clinical education that benefit all ASAHP member organizations.
Our most recent product is the set of five recommendations listed below; action strategies aligned to each and potential approaches to develop scholarship regarding clinical education are offered in the white paper and manuscript referenced above:
Develop meaningful strategic partnerships with healthcare organizations to prioritize evolving needs for current and future healthcare.
Assess and integrate interprofessional competencies throughout the course of study to meet contemporary competencies for efficient and effective interprofessional practice (IPP).
Incorporate effective use of healthcare technology into allied health education and practice.
Advocate within and among healthcare systems, higher education leadership, accreditation and professional organizations, and governmental agencies to foster and support IPP competencies and effective cross-discipline referrals to improve client/patient care.
Drive excellence in clinical education through promotion of research and scholarly activity.
CETF continues to disseminate these recommendations and to facilitate ongoing dialogue among major stakeholders, with a current emphasis on supporting forums and professional meetings across systems within local geographic areas and within specific disciplines. We want to be able to retrieve and share success stories, discuss effective partnerships reported by our ASAHP members, showcase the best models for clinical education, and encourage innovation and research.
We envision that CETF will continue its activities in this vein. Possible actions toward this aim include consolidating Deans’ reports on their institutions’ efforts with clinical partnerships, creative models for student placement, competency-based fieldwork systems, curricular revision with health care industry input, evaluation of student outcomes and clinical site satisfaction, and cost-effectiveness analyses. We expect to play an ongoing role in fostering communication across systems, and broadly sharing outcomes.
OUR CURRENT FOCUS – we are actively working to facilitate regional summits on Clinical Education recommendations for employers, health care preceptors and faculty. We have interest in a summit in Houston, Cleveland, and Utah and have an upcoming summit scheduled at Seton Hall and Rutgers in New Jersey this spring! We want to make the summit model available so that others can replicate it in their regions of the country and continue the dialogue more locally between stakeholders who are invested in clinical education of allied health students. Please reach out if you would like to participate in this work and help with an event in your region!
The literature tells us that health care delivery is going to continue its rapid change, which will disrupt traditional structures for clinical education. Our successful preparation of students for excellence as health care practitioners will be enhanced by robust relationships and close collaboration with our clinical and accrediting partners.
PREVIOUS CETF PROJECTS
Our first investigation consisted of structured interviews with representatives of accrediting bodies, recruited by ASAHP Deans. We explored their support for simulation and IPE as methods to partially meet the required clinical experience as defined in each discipline’s accreditation standards. Most were quite open and already engaged in approval of simulated experiences as part of allied health curricula. Those viewpoints informed our next inquiry with health care employers, to understand their concerns regarding the benefits and challenges of educating clinical students.
Our interviews of accrediting body executive directors and our employer survey both culminated in ASAHP conference presentations and a publication in the Journal of Allied Health. We were able to present a range of opinions about student training, from opportunities for new employee recruitment and access to information on best practices, to concerns about negative impact on employee productivity, supervisor burnout and onboarding costs.
These outcomes stimulated productive discussions and moved the CETF to its third major focus on generating recommendations to strengthen relationships between academic and health care institutions. The task force produced: a white paper on recommendations for clinical education at the request of the ASAHP Board of Directors in 2018; a working session at the 2018 ASAHP conference; a 2019 ASAHP presentation on recommendations and actionable plans; and a manuscript submitted for publication to the Journal of Allied Health with somewhat revised recommendations.