Influence of Cardiorespiratory Clinical Placements on the Specialty Interest of Physiotherapy Students
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Torres Sánchez, Irene; López López, Laura; Rodríguez Torres, Janet; Prados Román, Esther; Granados Santiago, María; Valenza, Marie CarmenEditorial
MDPI
Materia
Clinical placements Physiotherapy Specialty interest
Date
2019-11-17Referencia bibliográfica
Sánchez, I. T., López, L. L., Torres, J. R., Román, E. P., Santiago, M. G., & Valenza, M. C. (2019, December). Influence of Cardiorespiratory Clinical Placements on the Specialty Interest of Physiotherapy Students. In Healthcare (Vol. 7, No. 4). Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI).
Abstract
Clinical placements are an important part of health students’ training. Whilst much value
is placed on the clinical environment as a place to learn, there is a paucity of direct evidence about
its effectiveness. The aim of this study was to compare the competence, importance, and interest in
cardiorespiratory physiotherapy of students before and after one month of clinical practice. A preand
post-placement questionnaire about students’ interest in different physiotherapy subspecialties
was used. The students with a cardiorespiratory clinical placement showed a significant change in
their perception about the importance of the cardiorespiratory specialty (0.348 1.01; p < 0.001), while
no significant change was observed in the students without cardiorespiratory placement (-0.014
0.825; p = 0.883). The presence or absence of clinical placements seems to have a definitive impact on
students’ choice of a specialty. This implies the need for developing a set of clinical placements in all
the subareas of physiotherapy in order to give undergraduate students the opportunity to make a
better decision.