Preparing Clinician-Educators: OTD Students' Perceptions of an Intraprofessional Teaching–Learning Experience

Document Type (Journals)

Original Research

Abstract

Professional communication and the educator role are essential entry-level competencies in occupational therapy. To date, and to the authors' knowledge, no published study has used an inductive qualitative approach to examine how entry-level occupational therapy doctoral students describe and make meaning of a structured teaching-learning assignment that pairs them with occupational therapy assistant students and casts them in the role of teacher and evaluator. This retrospective qualitative study examined occupational therapy doctoral students' perceptions of a structured peer teaching–learning assignment grounded in the Learning by Teaching framework. Participants included entry-level occupational therapy doctoral students in their final year of study across four consecutive academic years (2022–2025; N = 100), aged 20 to 34 years and proficient in English. Reflective responses were de-identified and analyzed using an inductive–deductive hybrid reflexive thematic analysis. Three primary themes were constructed: (1) developing clinical expertise and an educator identity through teaching peers (n = 88), (2) balancing self-doubt, affective stress, and growing clinical confidence (n = 76), and (3) adapting intraprofessional communication and navigating collaborative barriers (n = 82), where n represents the number of participants whose reflections contributed to each theme. Students identified their primary communication challenges in relational negotiation, expectation-setting, and real-time feedback, rather than in content delivery. Findings suggest that authentic, peer-directed teaching–learning assignments may support development of core clinical, affective, and intraprofessional competencies reflected in the updated 2023 Accreditation Council for Occupational Therapy Education (ACOTE) standards.

Biography

Dr. Dianna Lunsford, OTD, CHT is a Professor at Nova Southeastern University and was previously the OTD Program Director at Gannon University.

Dr. Anne Moscony, OTD, CHT is an Assistant Professor at Gannon University.

Dr. Blair Carsone, PhD, MOT, OTR/L, BCP is an Associate Professor and Doctoral Capstone Coordinator at Gannon University.

Declaration of Interest

The authors report no declarations of interest.

Recommended Citation

Lunsford, D., Moscony, A. M., & Carsone, B. (2026). Preparing Clinician-Educators: OTD Students' Perceptions of an Intraprofessional Teaching–Learning Experience. Journal of Occupational Therapy Education, 10 (4). Retrieved from https://encompass.eku.edu/jote/vol10/iss4/6