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Changes in the accreditation standards of physical therapist education have added new levels of rigor to core faculty qualifications. This study aims to determine if any program characteristics exist that are common to core faculty deficiency citations in the 2019–2020 review cycle. Recently, more than half of all accredited physical therapist education programs (51.5%) have earned citations in core faculty standards/elements. A total of 266 Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy Education (CAPTE) accredited and developing physical therapist education programs were included. A review and analysis of programs cited and programs without citation was completed in 2021, to investigate these characteristics in relation to citation status: Campus setting, Regional accreditor, Length of CAPTE accreditation, University control, Carnegie classification, Physical Therapist Centralized Application Service participant, and Program cohort size. A regression model was found to correctly predict with 91.3% accuracy when including common characteristics of campus setting, years of accreditation, university control, and Carnegie class in programs cited for faculty deficiency. Our results suggest that programs residing in a town or rural setting, accredited for ten years or less, housed in an institution with a Carnegie classification of Master's or Baccalaureate, within private institutions, and enroll cohorts less than 31 are more likely to receive citations related to the qualifications or adequacy of core faculty than their counterparts. The description of characteristics common to programs cited could provide guidance to other programs in factors that might predispose them to core faculty deficiencies in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context: Students in health care often describe their feelings of self-inadequacy in clinical skills and report these feelings abate with experience. Objective: To determine whether early contextual learning experiences can improve entry-level student physical therapists' self-perceived level of clinical preparedness. Design: A pair-wise comparison of pre vs. post intervention. Survey of students self-perceived level of clinical preparedness before and after a series of three planned small group contextual learning experiences involving the assessment of actual hospital patients. Setting: Academic institution and associated medical center Participants: Thirty-nine first-year student cohort in the 10th month of a 36-month entry-level Doctor of Physical Therapy program who had not yet received clinical experience utilizing subjects other than classmates or program associated faculty. Results: Thirty-three (33) subjects completed the pre and post-survey (33/39) for a response rate of 84.6%. Subjects rated both their own personal abilities (p< .001) and the clinical abilities of their classmates (p<.001) as higher following the intervention, indicating that students in an entry-level DPT program have improved perception of their own and of their classmates' clinical preparedness when employing hospital patients prior to their first clinical affiliation. Conclusions: Early curriculum contextual learning in physical therapist education is valuable in improving student ratings of clinical self-preparedness and of fellow classmates' readiness to enter the clinic. Additionally, students recognize the benefits provided by contextual learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the author discusses the rehabilitation of geriatric patients who have undergone total knee arthroplasty (TKA).

Wounds and the accompanying loss of skin integrity often place a patient at increased risk for disability or death. Billions of dollars are spent each year to treat wounds and the effectiveness of these different treatments is highly variable. Following a 1997 publication describing a new treatment therapy that involved creating negative pressure over the wound, many publications have described the purported mechanism of action by which negative pressure may help wounds heal. Although this therapy appears effective, it remains unknown whether it is more effective than other wound closure techniques. In addition, although many uncontrolled, non-randomized studies describing the effectiveness of this therapy have been published, few prospective randomized trials have been conducted. Small sample sizes, variable outcome measures across studies, and significant methodological problems in the available randomized control trials further limit the conclusions that can be drawn regarding the relative effectiveness of vacuum-assisted wound closure. Analysis of these data provides weak evidence to suggest that negative pressure therapy is superior to saline gauze dressings in healing chronic wounds. Randomized controlled trials comparing healing, costs of care, patient pain, and quality-of-life outcomes of this treatment to non-gauze type dressings and other treatment modalities are needed.