An analysis of physiotherapy classroom-based teaching and hospital practical skills in Zambia

Abstract

The last decade 1990 to 2000 brought many changes to the global health care delivery systems. The changes have rendered the clinical-set up to be complex, ambiguous, and unstable. Some physiotherapy training programs have not kept pace with change as recorded in the health care delivery systems during the last ten years. The uneven changes between the health care delivery systems and physiotherapy education in the last decade have made the physiotherapy traditional techniques to be seemly unable to respond to complex, and ambiguous situations in the clinical setting. Some recent research studies have identified gaps in the curricula of health science training programs as a result of the rapid changes in the health care systems. Employers of health science professionals agree that new graduates in health sciences possess a body of knowledge in their respective fields of study. However, the employers' agreement is below 50% about the graduates' capacity for applying theory to practice in unfamiliar situations, being able to exercise critical judgment and rigorous independent thinking. The researcher was driven to carry out this study because of the persistent complaints about students' inability to translate their theory into practice in the clinical area by clinical educators. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the physiotherapy theory at the Evelyn Hone College (EHC) matched the hospital's clinical curriculum. A descriptive quantitative design was employed in the study, using retrospective data from the EHC physiotherapy curriculum, and physiotherapy records from Chipata General (rural) and Ndola Central Hospitals (urban) from 1995 to 1999. The Physiotherapy curriculum data and patient records from the two hospitals were compared to establish whether there was any congruence between the two.