EXPERIENCES OF PRACTICE EDUCATORS SUPPORTING DISABLED PHYSIOTHERAPY STUDENTS: A CRITICAL EXPLORATION

¹University of Hertfordshire, Allied Health Professions and Midwifery, Hatfield, United Kingdom

Background: Disabled physiotherapists have been part of the profession for over one hundred years, nevertheless, the greatest influences physiotherapy has in relation to disability are the therapeutic alliances with clients. This can lead to dissonance when a disabled person appears in a professional rather than a client role.
Practice educators are catalysts enabling students to assume standard patterns of physiotherapy behaviour. Research in health education shows that disabled students tend to be viewed through a deficit lens; little research specifically concerns physiotherapy students. Earlier research explored the experiences of disabled students on practice placement. This identified the key role of practice educators as influencing their success or failure. As a result the current study was designed to investigate the experiences of this group in supporting disabled students.

Purpose: To explore the experiences of practice educators to better understand constructions of physiotherapy identity and the impact that the presence of disability has on this process in the clinical setting.

Methods: This mixed methods study involved physiotherapy practice educators from London and the South-East of the UK. Online questionnaires were used initially and subsequently, eight semi-structured interviews explored educators’ experiences of supporting disabled students. Analysis drew upon Critical disability theory and Bourdieu’s sociology of practice taking an ideographic, interpretive approach with a critical exploration of emergent themes.

Results: Participants rarely discussed their understandings of disability; yet they had specific requirements for students to ‘disclose’ their impairments, often regarding disabled students as challenging. Arguably the values, forms of power and capital of the clinical field that lead to largely unquestioned behaviours in relation to disability, subsequently influence practice and are the underlying cause of these challenges. Issues were identified illustrating beliefs embedded within the professional doxa and habitus of physiotherapy that impacted upon participants’ understandings of disability and their subsequent practice; a ‘practice gap’ was identified in relation to support of disabled students.

Conclusion(s): Tensions were identified regarding the content and competence-based focus of education. A reconceptualisation of physiotherapy would enable a move away from a reliance on biomedicine for definitions of disability and the pedagogical practices that reinforce these so allowing consideration and embedding of different values and principles in relation to practice. Further research is needed to identify ways in which opportunities can be provided within the curriculum, research and network groups to explore professionalism and psychosocial aspects of health, through critical thinking and reflection. It would be helpful to establish a fuller picture of the overall situation in physiotherapy education by engaging with academics and disabled students in relation to transition from university to clinical placement.

Implications: Raising consciousness about these important issues will stimulate debate and offer opportunities for conversations with academic colleagues, practice educators and students. It may also inspire other practitioners to take a more critical stance in relation to established practice and ‘ways of being’ and add to the groundswell of the possibilities offered by an “otherwise physiotherapy” (CPN 2015).

Funding acknowledgements: None

Topic: Education

Ethics approval: Ethical approval for this study was granted by the Ethics committee of the Institute of Education, London

All authors, affiliations and abstracts have been published as submitted.