JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Community-based clinical training has been advocated as an excellent approach to transformation in clinical education. Clinical education for undergraduate physiotherapy students is a hands-on practical experience that aims to provide a student with skills to be fit to practice independently. However, in many countries, including South Africa, this training has been conducted in large urban academic hospitals. Such hospitals are not a true reflection of the environment that these students will be faced with as practicing healthcare professionals.

Objective:

The objective of this scoping review was to map out existing evidence on community-based clinical education models for undergraduate physiotherapy students globally

Methods:

A systematic scoping review will be based on the 2005 Arksey and O’Malley framework. Studies involving students and stakeholders in clinical education will be included. This review will not be limited by time. An electronic search of relevant literature, including peer-reviewed primary studies and grey literature, will be conducted from PubMed, Google Scholar, Medline, CINAHL, and the Cochrane Library. The search strategy will include keywords such as “education,” “physiotherapy,” “undergraduate,” “community-based," "training," "decentralized," and "distributed." Boolean logic will be used for each search string. Two independent reviewers will conduct screening of titles, abstracts, and full text before extracting articles. A predesigned data-charting table will supplement the extraction of data. Version 12 NVIVO software will aide in the thematic analysis of data.

Results:

This review will adopt a mixed-method analysis of the results of the selected studies, qualitative and quantitative analysis. Extracted data that will be analyzed quantitatively include numerical summaries of article type, duration of rotation, site description, location (rural, urban, peri-urban), and the aspects of the model. A descriptive-analytical method will be conducted using the Statistical Package for Social science Version 23. Thematic analysis will be used for the qualitative data from the reviewed studies to synthesize and interpret critical issues and themes arising from the included studies.

Conclusions:

It is envisaged that the evidence obtained from the extracted data will assist in the development of a model of community-based clinical education for undergraduate physiotherapy students in South Africa, and serve as a basis for future research. The discussion of this evidence will be guided by the research question utilizing a critical narrative approach to explore emerging themes. The enablers and barriers identified from the reviewed studies can guide the development of a community-based clinical education model.