COMPARISON OF STUDENT RATINGS OF CREDENTIALED VERSUS NON-CREDENTIALED CLINICAL INSTRUCTORS: A PILOT STUDY. Rosemary D. Wood*; Marie L. Koch physical therapy, quinnipiac university, hamden , CT PURPOSE: The purpose of this study is to determine whether students' perception of the quality of clinical instruction differs for APTA credentialed clinical instructors (CIs) vs. non credentialed CIs. BACKGROUNDS/SIGNIFICANCE: The APTA process of credentialing CIs began in 1997. APTA credentialed trainers offered workshops to clinicians to educate them in the art of teaching physical therapist students in the clinical environment. As of September 2004, approximately 12,000 clinical instructors have been credentialed. To date, there has been no evaluation as to whether this process affects students' perceptions of the quality of the clinical experience. SUBJECTS: A total of one hundred forty-seven student evaluations of CIs were collected from the fourth and fifth year Quinnipiac University (QU) physical therapist students enrolled in full time clinical internships. METHODS AND MATERIALS: Students were blinded to CI credentialing information. Two Academic Coordinators of Clinical Education (ACCEs) collected data on the credentialing status of CIs using QU's site visit flow sheet, following the standard protocol to visit or call each student while they are on each internship. Student ratings of CIs were collected using specific items (A1-A12.1), (B1-B8, B9.1, B10.1, B11.1) and (C1-C6)and the summary of the New england Consortium of ACCEs "Student Evaluation of a Clinical Education Experience" The Likert scale of the instrument was converted to a numerical scale of 1-6 to input data for analysis. ANALYSES: Data was analyzed using a Mann-Whitney U test, since the data were not normally distributed. Data were considered significant at the level of z=+/- 1.96, p=0.05. RESULTS: Only two items (A2 and A3) showed statistically significant differences as rated by both fourth and fifth year students. These items were consideration of a student's learning style (z=-2.191, p=0.028)and use of students' own goals (z=-2.477, p=0.013)in planning learning activities during the clinical experience.When analyzing data for each class separately fourth year students showed no statistically significant differences on any items of the evaluation.However, in addition to A2 and A3, fifth year students showed statistical differences on items A1, A5, B1 and the summary. These items were clear CI objectives (z=-2.072, p=0.038); student responsibility for learning (z=-1.963, p=0.050);CI balance of positive feedback and constructive criticism(z=-2.035,p=0.042) and overall rating of clinical experience (z=-2.018,p=0.044).Fifth year students consistently rated credentialed CIs higher than non credentialed CIs on all of the statistically significant items. CONCLUSIONS: The APTA CI credentialing course specifically contains educational materials to improve CI performance in all areas where statistically significant differences were found and credentialed CIs consistently were rated higher by students. It appears as if the credentialing course does indeed improve CI performance in the above areas and improves the overall rating of the clinical experience as evaluated by students. In this pilot study, 87.5% of fifth year students rated their clinical experience under the direction of a credentialed CI as "very positive", the highest rating. In comparison, only 69.1% of fifth year students rated their clinical experience under the direction of a non credentialed CI as "very positive". There were no items which were statistically significantly different as rated by fourth year students. The differences in fifth year students' ratings vs. fourth year student ratings may be in part due to fifth year students' previous clinical experiences and their prior working relationship with a CI. In addition, student maturity level and additional didactic knowledge may have contributed to their ability to discriminate between varying levels of CI performance. Other factors which may have contributed include the degree of difficulty of final affiliations and the CI expectations of students' performance on final affiliations. Because this sample of convenience, the small sample size and the use of a regional evaluation instrument, these statistical results cannot be generalized. Further research is needed to discern whether there is indeed a difference in students' ratings of credentialed vs. non credentialed CIs. A study using the APTA form:"Physical Therapist Student Evaluation: Clinical Experience and Clinical Instruction" is presently in progress. FUNDING SOURCE: none KEYWORDS: clinical instructors, APTA credentialing Copyright 2009 by the American Physical Therapy Association. Requests for reprints should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. Educators, students, and other academic customers may receive permission to reprint copyrighted material from Physical Therapy (ISSN 1538-6724) by contacting the Copyright Clearance Center Inc, 222 Rosewood Dr, Danvers, MA 01923. Other types of customers who want permission to reprint should contact the APTA Editorial Office, Attn: Physical Therapy.