Doctor of Physical Therapy

CURRICULUM

The professional curriculum is designed in two phases: systems and lifespan. Courses in the first year use a systems approach with cases in musculoskeletal, cardiopulmonary, neuromuscular physical therapy and wound care. In this first year, the students have an opportunity to practice and integrate their professional skills in a simulated clinic course (Case Management). Use of this experiential learning techniques has been presented at international meetings. At the end of the first year, the students have an 8-week full time clinical experience to further solidify and integrate this material in the clinical setting. The clinical experience is further enhanced by a clinical synthesis course which all students take after their clinical experiences and allows students to share their experiences with the other students.

In the second year of study, students explore practice topics in more depth within the context of a lifespan approach, beginning with disorders and diseases of children and ending with the problems of aging. At the end of these more advanced courses are two final full time clinical experiences. Again at the end of the clinical experiences is a clinical synthesis course so that students can further integrate and share with other students what they have learned on their clinical assignments. This clearly shows the imbedded, progressive development of clinical skills within this curriculum with each semester adding to the previous semester.

The curriculum is further integrated by team teaching. Most courses in the curriculum are team taught. Two faculty are in most courses and some course have three faculty. In addition, some faculty teach in more than one course in a semester. This helps provide the linkages between courses. In this way the faculty also provide role models in the advantages of teamwork for the students.