Clinical Instructor Characteristics, Behaviors and Skills in Allied Health Care Settings: A Literature Review

The purpose of this literature review is to compare both clinical instructor and student perceptions of helpful and hindering clinical instructor characteristics, behaviors and skills in athletic training and allied health care settings. Clinical education in athletic training is similar to that of other allied health care professions. Clinical education is used to practice didactic information in a hands-on environment, with the goal of integrating theory and practice in a controlled setting. Students are taught skills, behaviors and attitudes required to enter into professional practice. Athletic training clinical education evolved from the medical education model for training physicians and is currently based on the nursing model. Other allied health care professionals employ similar practices.

Objective: To provide an overview of helpful and hindering clinical instructor characteristics, behaviors and skills in athletic training and in other allied health professions.

Data Sources: MEDLINE, Health Source: Nursing/Academic, PubMed, SPORTDiscus, Academic Search Premier, ERIC and PsychArticles served as the data sources for the allied health fields that included athletic training, nursing, medicine, optometry, clinical psychology, occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech and language pathology, radiography.

Data Synthesis: Athletic trainer, allied health profession, and student perceptions of clinical instructor characteristics, behaviors and skills were reviewed and summarized.

Conclusions/Recommendations: This review presents literature suggesting that clinical education, regardless of the profession or setting, contains similarities. Clinical instructor characteristics, behaviors and skills are important and need to be the focus of clinical education in order to promote helpful, while minimizing hindering, behaviors. Effective clinical instructors enhance the learning process. Focusing on improved supervisor and supervision services should be employed to teach athletic trainers helpful clinical instructor behaviors.