Project leader Megan DaltonDevelopment of the APPDevelopment of the APP

An assessment tool for physiotherapy developed through an ALTC-funded project could lead to a more streamlines practice across the higher education sector.
 
Development of a competency based assessment instrument to evaluate students’ performance in
the workplace has recently been achieved within the speech pathology profession, now the same has occurred for physiotherapy.  
 
The project, ‘Development of the Assessment of Physiotherapy Practice (APP) Instrument’, was led by Megan Dalton (pictured) of Griffith University and maps the development of a standardised instrument to assess the clinical performance of physiotherapy students.
 
“Valid, reliable and standardised assessment formats and procedures, suited to application in the workplace, are important for meaningful and consistent assessment of the clinical performance of students,” Ms Dalton said.
 
According to Ms Dalton and her colleagues Professor Jenny Keating (Monash University) and Associate Professor Megan Davidson (La Trobe University), 16 universities across Australia currently offer physiotherapy programs, but prior to the APP project each used different clinical assessment criteria and instruments.
 
“Achieving standardisation of clinical assessment formats is a complex task, particularly given the forces shaping and changing the Australian health and education sectors,” she said.
 
“However, this project has delivered a single instrument with known validity and reliability which is now available to replace the 25 distinct assessment practices formerly in use.”
 
Since its development, eight universities have adopted the Assessment of Physiotherapy Practice tool as their sole method of assessment of physiotherapy practice with a further three planning to do so within the next 12 months.
 
Nine universities were involved in the field trials with data collected from several hundred physiotherapy students across Australasia in the creation of the assessment tool.
 
In total, more than 1000 clinical educators across Australia and New Zealand were involved in the development and testing of the APP and the team presented at four national and two international conferences.
 
“Without the enthusiastic support provided by all involved university academic and clinical staff, physiotherapy clinical educators and students the project would not have achieved such success,” Ms Dalton said.
 
On-line completion of APP is likely to be incorporated as an option within the next two years. ■
Posted on 3 July, 2009 - 12:03