Student Assessment in Telehealth Practice: Providing Guidance for Physiotherapy Clinical Educators

Clinical educators experienced significant challenges in providing student education during the 2020 global COVID-19 pandemic. Many services needed to rapidly adapt to incorporate telehealth whilst concurrently conducting student placements. Representatives from the Clinical Education Managers of Australia and New Zealand (CEMANZ) committee identified an immediate need to support clinical educators to apply the Assessment of Physiotherapy Practice (APP) tool to student assessment in telehealth. A subgroup of the CEMANZ committee was formed to gather representative consensus across all Universities regarding student assessment using the Assessment of Physiotherapy Practice (APP) tool in a telehealth context. Adapted APP performance indicators and a guiding document were then developed to address specific concerns, clarify the application of the APP assessment tool in a telehealth context and provide practical examples to guide clinical educators.
Providing this timely resource to the educator community enabled many student clinical education experiences to proceed in a pandemic environment and has illuminated telehealth as an innovative context in which to students can be educated and assessed.