The Characteristics of the Clinical Competence of Novice Physical Therapists and Occupational Therapists at the Time of Hiring in a Single Institution in Japan

Purpose: To identify the characteristics of the clinical competence of novice therapists at the time of hiring using the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE). Method: Twelve physical therapists and four occupational therapists participated in this study. The OSCE test comprised of attitudinal and technical items was administered at the time of hiring (10 days after the time of hiring). This research adopted three items which are widely used in clinical settings as a range-of-motion test, a muscle-strength test using a hand-held dynamometer, and Stroke Impairment Assessment Set. Each subject's attitudinal and technical total scores were calculated. To compare the percentages of attitudinal and technical scores to the perfect score, Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used. In addition, a chi-square test and residual analysis were used to determine the bias of the technical subitem score distribution in each test. Results: In each test, the percentages of attitudinal total scores to the perfect score were higher than those of technical total scores. For the technical subitems in each test, the participants scored higher on simple tasks than on multiple tasks. Conclusion: This study suggests that postgraduate education focusing on technical items, especially multiple tasks, is necessary, because attitudinal items have been sufficiently acquired.