Satisfaction of occupational and physical therapy students during their internship program

Abstract

The internship year is considered to be a golden period for students training, as they are exposed during that time to a majority of medical specialties and will gain more knowledge and clinical skills. it is the time they convert their taught information and knowledge into skills. However the quality of training and the appropriateness of environment as well as the satisfaction of trainee is a major issue. Our study aimed to assess the satisfaction about internship training of occupational and physical therapy, among interns in Riyadh. A cross-sectional study was conducted including 81 Occupational Therapy (OT) and Physical Therapy (PT) interns from King Abdulaziz Medical City (KAMC) and King Abduallah Specialized Children Hospital (KASCH) (48 females, 33 males; 41 PT, 40 OT; mean age 23.07 yrs, SD-1.17). Interns were excluded if they had a repeated rotation either due to weak performance or as disciplinary action from the department, faced problems in the department that required further investigation, and spent less than two months in the hospital. A survey previously used in Al Dammam study. It has 21 items divided across four domains that are either related to preparatory work towards internship, satisfaction, and comfort with the supervisor and internship site, attainment of intended learning outcomes, or evaluation and feedback during internship. Three interns were excluded as they spent less than two months in the hospital. Interns had a satisfaction rate of 83.05\% where PT interns had a satisfaction rate of 86.15\%, and OT interns had 78.50\%. Additionally, PT interns had a higher satisfaction rate than OT interns across all domains. However, the only significant difference between the two programs was on the items related to evaluation and feedback during the internship. Interns in the main hospital had a satisfaction rate of 84.15\%, whereas interns in KASCH had a satisfaction rate of 80.94\%.We found a high satisfaction rate of OT and PT interns in this study, and higher satisfaction of PT interns compared to OT interns. However, further research can be conducted using the same questionnaire to explore different hospitals in Riyadh and different region within Saudi Arabia to have an overall estimation of satisfaction rate among the PT and OT at the national level.