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Document Type (Journals)

Original Research

Abstract

This study investigated the impact of pairing 112 occupational therapy (OT) and 66 occupational therapy assistant (OTA) students in small groups over a 13-week clinical skills class. Students worked together in the weekly 2-hour class to practice various clinical skills and had the option to attend an additional weekly 2-hour open lab. A repeated measures design was used to evaluate students’ perceived importance and ability to engage in intraprofessional collaboration based on the Kirkpatrick model. The Intraprofessional Collaborative Practice Survey (ICPS) was administered at three time points: the beginning (T1), the middle (T2), and the end of the trimester (T3) for four intraprofessional collaboration competencies: Teamwork, Roles/Responsibilities, Communication, and Values/Ethics. Friedman’s ANOVA and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests revealed that both OT and OTA students maintained a high perceived importance of intraprofessional collaboration from T1 through T3. The OT and OTA students demonstrated different learning curves in perceived ability. Significant improvements were observed from T1 to T2 for OT students, and from T2 to T3 for both OT and OTA students, with moderate and small effect sizes across different intraprofessional collaboration competencies. Overall, the paired learning provided a valuable experience and enhanced both OT and OTA students’ perceived ability of intraprofessional partnership possibilities. The findings emphasized the value of collaborative learning in OT education and offered insights for future intraprofessional collaboration curriculum development. This study highlighted the benefits of structured, paired learning experiences in fostering professional growth and effective teamwork.

Biography

Chia-Wei Fan, PhD, OTR/L is an Associate Professor in the Department of Occupational Therapy at AdventHealth University.

Vicki Case, MS, Ed, OTR/L is an Associate Professor and Program Director of the Occupational Therapy Assistant (OTA) program in the Department of Occupational Therapy at AdventHealth University.

Declaration of Interest

The authors report no declarations of interest.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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