Clinical Reasoning Skills in the Pediatric Occupational Therapy Course

This paper describes a work in progress in which multimedia is integrated into classroom instruction with the goal of enhancing clinical reasoning skills among third year occupational therapy students. The integration of multimedia and problem-based learning is designed to create a clinical climate in the classroom. The goal is to provide additional opportunities to use learning materials, and to apply the skills and knowledge students need in evaluation, intervention planning, formulating treatment goals and objectives, and documentation. Introduction Current trends in occupational therapy education requires the movement away from the memorization of facts ("recipe approach") and toward an analysis, synthesis, and application of the data to provide excellent services to children with disabilities. Learning how to exercise clinical reasoning in the classroom in preparation for the clinic requires more complex cognitive processes than simple memorization. Observation of both typical and atypical children and the posing of problems to be solved assists students in the experience of this process. Peloquin and Babola (1996) and Babola and Peloquin (1999) proposed the creation of a “clinical climate in the classroom". However, their original work did not explore the use of technology within the classroom for this purpose. The project described in this paper combines the use of multimedia to make the observation of typical and atypical children more accessible to students who do not have access to clinical experiences while receiving classroom instruction.