An independent study course designed to provide the student with an opportunity to engage in a collaborative project with faculty. The student, with faculty supervision, develops an individualized learning contract that involves critical inquiry, clinical research, and/or classroom teaching.
Independent study is available to those students who wish to continue their learning in an area after completing the regularly offered courses in that area.
This sixteen-week, full-time clinical experience occurs off-campus and is the culmination of the academic and clinical portions of the DPT curriculum. The experience is designed to provide students with an opportunity for guided and independent experience providing physical therapy services to the public.
These courses are designed to build from students' basic backgrounds in a specialized area of physical therapy practice to a level of expertise in comprehensive understanding, clinical reasoning, and application of clinical skills. Several topic areas are available each year. Course content includes clinical examination and intervention theory and practice, the opportunity to practice knowledge and skill in the treatment of actual patients, and synthesis of knowledge in a formal case report. Three topics are required.
This course covers the role of physical therapists in administrative settings and leadership roles. An overview of the costs of providing physical therapy, billing and coding, and payment systems is presented. Constraints and benefits of care delivery in various practice environments are discussed. Leadership is presented as a vital skill for all physical therapists, ranging from treating a patient on-on-one to roles managing staffs, departments, and serving the profession through positions in state and national professional associations.
This course provides an introduction to salient psychological factors having direct bearing on effective physical therapy practice.
The integrated clinical experience gives students an opportunity to further apply their knowledge and skills in a realistic clinical setting. Students work closely with clinical instructors to provide physical therapy services to individuals from the community with impairments, functional limitations or changes in physical function resulting from a variety of neurological or musculoskeletal disorders. In addition, students participate in health promotion and injury prevention programs, interdisciplinary collaboration, and begin to develop clinical teaching skills.
This fourteen-week, full-time clinical experience occurs off-campus and is designed to provide students with an opportunity for guided and independent experiences in providing physical therapy services to the public.
This course teaches health promotion and prevention of secondary impairments in neurologic populations. Using SCI as a model patient for lifelong care, PT students are taught skills that span from acute care to aging with disability. Upper extremity preservation concepts are learned in conjunction with advanced transfer and wheelchair skills to maximize community participation potential. An overview of wheelchair seating and prescription for individuals with neurologic disability, as both health promotion and as intervention, completes the course.
This course provides an in-depth exploration of intervention theory, design, and techniques for adults with neurologic conditions. Students learn to apply the principles of neuroplasticity, motor control and motor learning in clinical reasoning in order to develop competence in functional movement training and intervention for adults with neurologic conditions.