The new physiotherapy curriculum includes some changes to the timing and duration of clinical placements. This presentation will go over some of those changes.
PT881, the first clinical placement, occurs during January to February after the Foundation's academic block. PT882 occurs during May to June after the core A academic block. PT883 and 884 occur back-to-back in September to October and November to December respectively, after the Core B Academic block. And finally, PT885 occurs either during March to April, or July to August, alternating with students completing their project based PT886 placement.
Placements are seven weeks long within an 8 week block, allowing for some flexibility if a clinician is away for vacation, illness, courses, or if they work part time. Placements are still a minimum of 210 hours, but now they're 4 and a half days per week, spread over 7 weeks. This is the result of inclusion of something called academic half days.
Academic half days are regularly scheduled educational events under faculty supervision which happened during clinical placements, but outside of clinical supervised time. Students will not be on placement during the scheduled academic half day. What this means is that students will generally be on placement 4 and a half days per week over 7 weeks. These activities could be in person where the student is supporting labs on campus, or virtual, where the student participates in small group learning activities. The School of Rehabilitation Therapy will schedule students for these academic half days, but cannot accommodate requests for changes based on the clinician's preferred schedule. There'll be no impact on clinician honoraria as the amount of clinical time per placement remains unchanged.