Professional placement educational processes: balancing student-centred education and client-centred care during clinical education

To date, the literature regarding clinical education strategies that simultaneously meet both the student's and the client's needs is limited. This paper reports on a study that aimed to identify features of clinical education processes that epitomize student-centred education as well as client-centred care. Focusing on physiotherapy pre-professional education, a mixed method approach using quantitative and qualitative methods was used within the analytical and interpretive paradigm of research. Kolb's (1984) Experiential Learning Cycle was proposed as a model to explore contemporary clinical teaching practices. This model was found to be insufficient to maximise a student's learning from practice because it did not include the voice of third party, the client, in an educative way. A 6-Step framework emerged which extends Kolb's original model by adding two aspects of typical teaching and learning in clinical situations: The seeking of client consent and the post-consultation evaluation of outcomes which includes the clients' perspective of events. Given that it is widely advocated for entry level health professionals to be client-centred, this emerging educational framework has the potential to significantly impact on the student's development of a client-centred approach to clinical practice.