Do you wish you had a dedicated clinical educator within your team that could be responsible for student and staff education? Are you worried that your team is too small to need a role like this, that you wouldn’t financially be able to sustain it, or that there aren’t enough benefits to make it worthwhile? I am completely biased because I have found myself in a clinical educator role in public and private sectors, in both small and large teams; I’ve loved it, and will now try to convince you why it’s worth considering for your team!

What do you mean by a dedicated “clinical educator role”?

When I say “clinical educator” I’m talking about an OT within your team that is responsible for planning, coordinating, and generally overseeing any education related activities within your workplace. This could include:

• Coordinating OT student clinical placements.

• Planning a regular in-house CPD program, that may include inservices, guest presenters and journal club sessions.

• Developing and overseeing the implementation of a staff onboarding curriculum.

• Setting up policies and processes to ensure access to external CPD opportunities is equitable within the team.

• Sharing CPD opportunities with the team at staff meetings.

• Providing input or guidance during staff professional development planning meetings about how the staff member can achieve their learning goals.

What are the potential benefits of creating a role like this in my OT team?

There are plenty of benefits for the OT in the role, as well as for the whole team, including:

• The administration side of student placements is streamlined and high-quality – e.g. they would be the main point of contact for all students and can provide the right answers to logistical placement questions straight away, taking the pressure off individual supervisors who may only need to remember that information once a year.

• They provide an additional point of support for both OT students and their supervisors during clinical placements – this is especially beneficial when a student is experiencing difficulty during the placement.

• It is easier to collaborate with universities to optimise the student placements you offer – the clinical educator gets exposure to the processes and preferences of a range of universities, not just the one university of the student they directly supervise themselves.

• Your student program will be awesome, and if you’re on the hunt for new graduates to recruit, then having a high-quality student program can be a helpful step for finding and supporting your future staff.

• It can help to generate some enthusiasm and advocacy for the importance of including educational and professional development activities in normal work hours (not as an after thought that you only squeeze in when you can).

• It can assist staff to improve the quality of their clinical practice, through assisting with identifying learning goals and opportunities, and teaching skills like reflection and how to effectively provide feedback.

• It can provide an alternative route for career progression – for those OTs that don’t necessarily want to be clinical specialists, or line-manage a team of staff, this could be an alternative that allows them to take on additional responsibilities and remain satisfied in their job.

What considerations do you need to make before you establish this role?

It’s sounding like a pretty good idea isn’t it!? Before you jump into establishing this type of role within your team, here are some things to consider:

• All the awesome benefits outlined above take time – don’t expect an OT to be able to squeeze in additional responsibilities on top of their standard clinical load as it will not be sustainable.

• Make sure there is space within their workload to have a dedicated number of hours per week to focus on their educator role. The amount of hours you allocate will be dependent on things like:

• The size of your team

• Whether you already have lots of established in-house education or student programs in place and just need someone to over-see them rather than start them up from scratch, and

• In the private sector, what reduction in clinical KPIs/income from that therapist the rest of the team can sustain.

• Build the role into your career progression framework and develop a guide for how staff can progress into the role. Also consider that a fancy title like “Learning and Development Coordinator” or “Clinical Education Lead” is nice to put on your CV and can help with staff satisfaction and retention through allowing them to feel valued 😉

• Provide opportunities for other interested OTs to take on small parts of the role under the educator’s guidance, so there is also a succession/back-up plan for if your educator is on leave or changes job.

• Make sure any new processes or systems are documented! This also feeds into the ‘having a back-up plan’ idea, so that all the great systems that are established can still continue even if the clinical educator is not available.

So, is it worth it?

This exact question came up in a recent Journal Club session on the topic of supporting students during clinical placements. In the words of the manager of a medium-sized OT team who has established a clinical educator role, it was “100% worth it”. You won’t necessarily see an overnight increase in your revenue, like if you added a new OT role to lead a new service stream, but all the positives outlined above will lead to other short and long-term benefits for the clinical educator, and your OT team.

So, if you’re an OT manager hopefully this has given you some ideas to think about, and if you’re an OT who would love to find themselves in this type of role one day, then use the ideas in this blog to start planning your sales pitch to your manager 😉

If you found this post helpful, then continue to follow ‘Your OT Tutor’ or visit the website (https://yott.au) and sign-up to the mailing list. The Journal Club session recording from March 2023 was all about supporting OT students during clinical placements and will be available this week, and by the end of April 2023 there will be a range of ‘done-for-you’ resources to help make student placements as efficient and high-quality as possible.

#YourOTTutor #OccupationalTherapy #OccupationalTherapyStudent #ClinicalEducation #NDIS