Ahh, clinical rotations. The time in your PT schooling when the proverbial rubber meets the road. Time to take a much needed break from sitting behind a desk all day on campus while staring at PowerPoint slides in class. Time to break away from the labs, writing papers and actually get off campus for a change.

For some, it’s an incredibly exciting time, while for others even just the thought of heading out on clinical rotations is nerve-wracking beyond all measure.

If you find yourself in the latter of those two categories and are wanting to calm your nerves a bit or get the most out of your clinical experiences, this post is for you.If you’re excited and not all that nervous, this post still has some great tips that can help you make a lasting impression on the clinics you rotate through, maybe even landing you a future opportunity for employment.

A quick overview of the five tips for crushing your clinical rotations

In this blog post, I’ve got some personal insight and tips for helping you dominate your clinicals. Here’ a brief summary of those tips:

Tip 1: Your job isn’t to know everything. Your job is to show your CI and the clinic that you have a passion for learning and wanting to become the best PT you can possibly be.
Tip 2: You don’t need twenty years of experience to show world-class compassion and care for your patients.
Tip 3: You don’t need twenty years of experience to show world-class work ethic and professionalism.
Tip 4: You will appear smarter to your CI and fellow PT’s when you admit that you don’t know something than trying to BS your way through an answer.
Tip 5: Throughout all your rotations, you will likely get at least one placement that you don’t like. Understand that the right mindset in this situation can help you better understand what you want your PT future and career to look like.

Keep reading below for more insight and further elaboration on each one of these tips!

Getting ready for your clinical rotations

Some schools break up clinical rotations throughout different points in the program, while other schools (such as my school, D’Youville) saved all our clinicals until our final year, at which point we had completed about 95% of all our didactic coursework. Clinicals were essentially the only thing left at that point.

Regardless of how your school does things, it doesn’t really change how you should approach your clinical rotations.

If your school sends you out on a placement or two before you’ve completed some key courses, it will change what you’re expected to know or be proficient at, perhaps.

But, even then, your attitude towards getting the most out of your clinical time (both professionally and personally) should be just the same as if you had completed all your didactic work before heading out on your first placement.

Know what you want to get out of your clinical experiences

Hopefully you know what you want to get out of your clinicals. For me, I wanted myself to be challenged and pushed to a very high extent, knowing that I would likely hate that decision during the process but be thankful afterwards.

I played a little game in my head every day for my rotations. The game was called “No one will out-work me here in the clinic”

Of course, I was out-performed by most all of them, but I like to believe that I wasn’t outworked.

And that’s largely how it played out. I worked stupidly hard and as a result walked away with job offers from three of my four placements, one of which said they weren’t hiring but were willing to bring me on board anyways.

Hard work works

I mention that preceding paragraph not to impress you, but rather to impress upon you how hard work works if you know what you’re after.
And alas, I now work for the renown Tower Physiotherapy & Sports Medicine, here in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

So, while I could type a whole entire book on being successful on your clinicals, I’ll keep it to these following points, as I feel they’re the most important ones to keep in the forefront of your mind as you head out to the clinics.

Tip 1: Remember that your job isn’t to know everything. Your job is to show your CI and the clinic that you have a passion for learning and a work ethic that cannot be beat.

People will out-perform you in the clinic, as one would expect; they’ve been doing this a lot longer than you. But it’s totally within your control as to whether or not you out-work them.

Your CI’s and others you’ll be working with don’t expect you to know everything. They know that you’re a student and that your job is to learn. So, take a breath and let that soak in if you’re feeling any pressure about being in the clinic.

You’re expected to work hard and learn. In other words, your job is to go into “sponge mode” and soak up everything that you can for information, knowledge and experience while trying to then apply it as best as you can.

So, breathe easy and keep this tip on mind if you’re nervous about your rotations and remember that your CI would much rather see a student who is willing to be taught and work hard than a student who thinks they know everything.

Tip 2: You don’t need twenty years of experience to show world-class compassion and care for your patients

It’s pretty easy to fall into the mental trap of thinking that you have nothing to offer the clinics that you’ll be rotating through. Many students make this mistake.

Even if you don’t know the best next step to take treatment-wise with a patient or you’re not sure how to proceed with an assessment, your ability to take their concerns seriously, show compassion or empathy are all completely separate from and thus, unaffected by your lack of clinical expertise.

“Patients don’t care about how much you know until they know about how much you care.”

Those words were spoken to our class by our paediatrics professor, and have always stuck with me. Whether you feel like you know everything or know nothing at all, everything in the clinic needs to begin with showing the respect, care and compassion for every single one of your patients.

If you keep this in mind and can act it out, it’s a win-win. Your CI’s will be impressed and your patients will be happy. And again, the best part of it all is that every single PT student has the ability to do this, regardless of their GPA or clinical expertise.

Tip 3: You don’t need twenty years of experience to show world-class work ethic and professionalism

Piggybacking off of tip number 2, the extent of your PT schooling or your grades are completely irrelevant to your ability to show a work ethic and professionalism that can match (and even surpass) any other clinician out there.

For clarity sake, when I talk about professionalism, I’m talking about characteristics such as punctuality, dependability, showing respect to others, being a team player, and so on.

You can show just as much work ethic and professionalism on day one of your first clinical placement as any other licensed PT out there. Clinical knowledge and experience, no. Work ethic and professionalism? Yes.

This is because your ability to be professional and work hard are not dependent upon the PT classes you’ve taken or what your GPA is. If you’ve made it this far into PT school, you should be fully aware that you control how hard you work and how professional you act. You don’t need to rely on anyone else for this; you are the captain of your own ship when it comes to this one.

Your CI’s know that they will be teaching you a lot about clinical practice, that’s why they take students. But, they aren’t going to teach you how to be professional…and if you find that they are, it’s a bad sign.

Remember, you control how hard you work and how professional you act. And I would contend that there is a direct correlation between working hard with a professional demeanour and landing your dream job and beginning (and sustaining) a successful career.

Tip 4: You will appear smarter to your CI’s, fellow PT’s and patients when you admit that you don’t know something than trying to BS your way through an answer you don’t know.

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” – Bertrand Russell

I hold a personal belief that the smartest people are the ones who say the words “I don’t know” the most, but then are passionate about and determined to find the answer.

In the world of psychology, there’s phenomenon that can occur within people that is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. In short, it’s a cognitive bias that leads people to be unable to recognize their lack of ability. Essentially, it’s people not knowing what they don’t know. Don’t be one of these people.

Your CI’s will challenge you during your clinicals, as they want you to grow and learn, but they can sniff out BS a mile away (so can your patients, too). What your CI’s want is to see if you have a willingness to come up with the answer, either by asking others, finding it in a book, etc. And what your patients want is to be honest and professional with them. Feeding them BS to try and impress them isn’t professional.

Therefore, don’t be afraid to say “I don’t know” BUT, don’t just stop there. ALWAYS follow those words up with “…but I will find the answer and get back to you on that.” Or “…but I’d love for the opportunity to learn and have you show me”, depending on the situation.

Tip 5: Throughout all your rotations, you will likely get at least one placement that you don’t like. Understand that the right mindset in this situation can help you better understand what you want your PT future and career to look like.

Consider yourself extremely fortunate and know that you’re in the minority if every single one of your placements is one that you immensely enjoy. It happens, but a lot of the time it doesn’t.

The key is to use such a clinical placement to help better understand what you truly want to get out of your PT dream job or dream setting. If you’re not enjoying a clinical placement, ask yourself what you don’t like about it.
Is it the type of PT setting (in-patient or out-patient or sub-acute setting) that you don’t like? Is it the type of PT specialty that you don’t enjoy (neuro-based facility vs orthopaedics-based, etc.)? Or is it how the facility is run? Is it the treatment philosophies?

The more of these questions you can answer, the more you’ll know what you want your clinical future to look like!

I had one placement that I really didn’t enjoy for a variety of reasons. It happens to most students, so think it not strange if you find yourself in a similar situation. It can kind of seem like a waste of time to be in a clinical environment you know that you want no part of, but it’s only truly wasted time if you don’t learn from it and if you don’t learn more about your PT dreams and desires in the process.

Just remember that not enjoying a placement does not absolve you from giving your best care and treatment to all patients whom you treat. Every patient deserves your best possible care!

Use any less-than-stellar clinical rotations as a time for personal and professional growth. Even dream jobs have times that are trying and difficult. Use this time as a means to begin identifying skills and mentalities for developing your character in addition to learning what you want your clinical future to look like.

A clinical can seem like it will drag on forever if you’re not enjoying it. Remember that it won’t. And the better you keep your mindset and attitude about the whole experience, the quicker it will go.

The struggle can be real, but if you’re willing to dig deep and use it as an opportunity for growth, you’ll get great things out of the process and walk away from it better than when you went into it.

Closing remarks

There are plenty more tips that I would like to give when it comes to preparing yourself for clinical placements. I will however save them for a later post, and will be sure to provide a link within this article when they are posted.

The clinical placements are a marathon, not a sprint. But if you want to alleviate some anxiety and/or leverage yourself for potential employment with any of those facilities, or collect strong reference letters from any of your CI’s, then understand that these five tips can really help out with those situations.

You’re not expected to be an expert when it comes to your clinical reasoning or clinical skills during your placements.

But you are expected to do all that you can to soak everything up, apply it and be as professional and compassionate as you can be throughout the whole process.

If you find yourself to be nervous or anxious, there’s no harm in mentioning this to your CI’s. They will understand and developing an open line of communication and expectations will ensure that your placement(s) get off to a healthy start and goes as smoothly as possible.

Wishing you the best of luck during this exciting time!