Designing and implementing a physiology course for a new doctoral occupational therapy program with student feedback

Recently, the Occupational Therapy Department requested a custom-designed medical physiology course for the students in the new occupational therapy doctoral program. The first author, a physiologist with extensive experience in teaching both undergraduate preprofessional and medical students in human physiology, was recruited to design and implement the course. The course was designed to be consistent with the constructivist philosophy that guides the occupational therapy curriculum. The course was offered for the first time during fall/spring 2015/2016 and included both first- and second-year occupational therapy doctoral students. A number of anonymous assessment tools were used to evaluate students' perceptions regarding the effectiveness of various pedagogies used in the course in enhancing their learning. A summative course assessment survey with comments was used at the end of the course. This paper describes the model of course design and the student feedback, which generated some suggestions for improvement of the course. This approach in designing a new course for a new disciplinary group of students should be helpful to other faculty involved in developing courses for health career programs populated by students with variable physiology backgrounds and different educational needs. The final relevant feedback from the course would be to have the students evaluate the usefulness of the course to their future careers immediately following their certification examinations in a year or two and during their subsequent clinical experiences; however, that information will likely be more difficult to obtain.