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Abstract
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Context: Graduating athletic training students must consider both physical and mental aspects of injury to fully rehabilitate the injured athlete; however, programs may not be preparing students to apply psychosocial strategies that can improve the recovery process.
OBJECTIVE: To examine Psychosocial Intervention and Referral (PIR) content area curricular methods (instruction and assessment) and the confidence of program directors (PDs) in a graduating student's ability to utilize psychological interventions.
DESIGN: Cross-sectional survey. Setting: An Internet e-survey gathered information from 128 undergraduate PDs. Patients or Other Participants: 128 undergraduate professional education PDs; response rate 38.3% (128/334) Data Collection and Analysis: E-survey variables included educational background (accredited program or internship) and years of PD service, courses, instruction and assessment methods, program demographics (10), content area emphasis rank, and PD's confidence in graduating students' PIR abilities (0-10 scale). Chi-square and odds ratio analyses were employed.
RESULTS: PIR content area received the lowest instructional emphasis rank overall (n = 69; M = 6.80 [2.34]). Competencies that focus on applying psychological interventions with patients were most often instructed through lectures and/or discussions (72.6%) and assessed through written tests (52.3%). Significant Pearson chi-square tests (P less than 0.05) showed that confident PDs (rating of 7 to 10) were more likely to use role-playing to instruct and practical exams to assess student learning. Odds ratio analyses found significantly higher odds of confidence in PDs who used practical assessment methods (1.12 to 25.11).
CONCLUSION: The results suggest that the use of hands-on instructional and assessment techniques will increase a PD's confidence in a student's psychosocial intervention abilities. Implications for effective pedagogical methodology are discussed. (Contains 7 tables.)
Language: en |