Training Faculty Members to Coach Doctor of Physical Therapy Students

Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) students often encounter academic and personal challenges during their education. Recent recommendations highlight the need for targeted support strategies, including coaching, to foster students' personal and academic development. Little research exists on coaching within DPT education, particularly concerning the training of faculty members as coaches. This method/model description outlines structured professional development to train faculty members as coaches in 2 accelerated, hybrid DPT programs and describe the effects on faculty attitudes, skills, and self-efficacy.

The researchers designed a program to develop faculty members' skills for 3 coaching concepts-empathetic listening, asking powerful questions, and adhering to a coaching session structure. Training was delivered through both asynchronous and synchronous methods. Faculty member participants completed post-intervention and retrospective pre-intervention surveys to assess changes in attitudes, skills, and self-efficacy related to the coaching concepts.

Significant increases were found in faculty members' attitudes, self-efficacy, and skills across all coaching concepts following participation in the training. These results suggest that the structured coach training program was feasible and effective.

Structured coach training enhances faculty members' perceptions of their attitudes, skills, and self-efficacy for coaching DPT students. Future research may investigate the effectiveness of this training on student outcomes and the applicability of this training model to various DPT programs. This model contributes to the growing body of literature on faculty development in physical therapist education, demonstrating that well-designed, flexible training programs can enhance faculty members' capabilities for performing new roles such as coaching.