Introduction: In Japan, there are limited studies on clinical practice in acute care hospitals within the field of physical disability, particularly regarding its educational impact on students.
Objectives: The purpose of this study is to examine the characteristics of learning that occupational therapy students acquire through clinical practice in an acute care hospital.
Methods: This study included 32 fourth-year occupational therapy students from the years 2022 and 2023. We retrospectively examined the Acute Phase Rehabilitation Training Experience Table, which was independently created by our university, and analyzed the freely written responses on "what was learned" based on Berelson's content analysis method. The study was approved by the institutional Ethics Committee (approval number: 2023-101-B).
Results: A total of 100 record units were extracted and, as a result of the analysis, were classified into the following six categories. Clinical Skills (35.0%), Risk Management (27.8%), Knowledge (22.7%), Organizing Information (5.2%), Occupational Therapy Perspectives (5.2%) and Multidisciplinary Collaboration (4.1%).
Conclusion: Students learned clinical skill with an awareness of risk management. However, “occupational therapy perspective” was low at 5.2%, indicating that instructors need to place more emphasis on it in their education so that the occupational therapy perspective is not diluted in acute care.