Introduction: Successful completion of clinical education experiences is a graduation requirement for students in occupational therapy and physical therapy programmes. A scoping review was conducted to determine what is known about possible clinical experience performance predictors and to find associated research gaps.
Methods: The search included one hand-searched journal and seven databases, which were used to identify related relevant studies: CINAHL, Education Database, Education Source, Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), PubMed, REHABDATA, and Web of Science. A research librarian guided the search process, and the review's reporting is structured by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) Checklist. Studies were included if they contained predictors of clinical experience success indicated by validated performance evaluation tools that were scored by clinical instructors. A multidisciplinary team reviewed the title, abstract, and full text for inclusion and conducted thematic data synthesis to categorise findings.
Findings: Twenty-six articles met the inclusion criteria. The majority of articles were of correlational design and included single institutions. Seventeen articles included occupational therapy, eight included physical therapy, with only one article including both programmes. Four categories of predictors of clinical experience success were identified: pre-admission variables, academic preparation, learner characteristics, and demographics. Each of the main categories included three to six subcategories. Key findings included the following: (a) The most common cited predictors in clinical experiences are academic preparation and learner characteristics, (b) more experimental design studies are needed to determine the causal relationship between predictors and clinical experience success, and (c) future research is needed on ethnic disparities and clinical experience success.
Conclusion: Findings from this review show that possible predictors of clinical experience success include a wide range of factors when correlating success with a standardised tool. Academic preparation and learner characteristics were the most investigated predictors. There were only a small number of studies that found a correlation with pre-admission variables. The findings of this study suggest that students' academic achievement may be a critical element of clinical experience preparation. Future research using experimental designs and across institutions is needed to determine the main predictors for student success.
Keywords: clinical education; fieldwork; occupational therapy; physiotherapy; predictors.
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