Introduction

Occupational Therapy is the use of therapeutic activities to improve and maintain patients' abilities to resume life roles such as self care, work and leisure. In this regard, Therapist-patient relationship is important throughout the process of intervention. Once of the challenges that our Occupational Therapy Students face is to understand the needs of different patients suffering from various injuries and disease, and the application of the professional knowledge into clinical case management.

The conventional clinical educational model was to place students in the real clinical environment to facilitate the learning of clinical skills and professional practice through direct contact with patients. However, with the huge expansions of the Occupational Therapy services from acute medical settings to community rehabilitation centers, it remains difficult to expose students with various types of disabilities and different models of rehabilitation through the four blocks of clinical training. It will limit the exposure of students and their learning.

This website is built in to strengthen students clinical case management skills. Through the development of five case studies suffered from various form of injuries or diseases, our students would experience the various stages of rehabilitation ranging from the acute stage, rehabilitation stage and integration stage. The information in this website is designed to enrich students' clinical knowledge on the disease process, management and the practical OT skills such as interview, assessment, treatment planning and implementation. It is expected that the website is not confined to only one subject teaching but to serve as the information and resource platform built into the OT curriculum. The website is particularly useful to be used for teaching:

Occupational Therapy Theory I and II (RS 220 & RS 420)

Occupational Therapy Foundations in Human Performance (RS 247)

Clinical Sciences in Musculo-skeletal conditions (RS 330)

Occupational Therapy for Physical Dysfunction I (RS 341)

We plan to expand the website by adding more case studies ranging from physical dysfunction, Psychosocial dysfunction, peadiatric and geriatric condition into it. Students are expected to follow each case study and to prepare for the answers raised in the website. Detailed discussion will be conducted in the tutorial session and further communication with teaching staff could be facilitated via the chat room and email discussion. It has been suggested that students could still acquire high levels of learning outcomes in a remote learning environment such as the internet (Williams & Williams, 1998). Therefore, This website is developed to enhance students' learning via a virtual case study.

There has been a long argument on integration of theories into practice. By introducing this case study website, our teaching faculty can easily implement the theoretical part of training into the real clinical situation, thus bridging the gap between the university and the clinical settings.

Prepared by

Dr. Cecilia Li, PhD.,

Programme Leader,

BSc(Hon) degree in Occupational Therapy

Department of Rehabilitation Sciences

The Hong Hong Polytechnic University