Start of Level II Fieldwork for the 1st Cohort of PKUHSC Students
January 18, 2021

The start of the new year signaled another “first” for the inaugural cohort of master’s occupational therapy students at the Peking University Health Science Center (PKUHSC). Having finished their master’s level academic coursework last semester, the inaugural cohort officially started their first Level II fieldwork experiences on January 18. The PKUHSC fieldwork program is structured slightly differently from the one at USC Chan, with students completing a total of three Level II fieldwork experiences of eight weeks each.

For this first placement, the six students in the inaugural class were placed across a total of three different sites: China-Japan Friendship Hospital, Haidian Hospital, and Peking University Third Hospital, all of which are affiliated or teaching sites of PKUHSC. As occupational therapy in China tends to be a subspecialty within rehabilitation therapy and not yet its independent profession and field, not all of the affiliated fieldwork sites have established “Occupational Therapy” departments. To facilitate a smooth Level II fieldwork process for the fieldwork educators and sites, many of whom are new to the Level II fieldwork process and its expectations, including supervising OT students at the master’s level, the China Initiative team and course instructors at PKUHSC co-led a Level II fieldwork orientation. The focus of the session was to introduce the USC-PKUHSC partnership and Dual-Degree program and its curriculum, as well as expectations and suggestions for a mutually rewarding Level II fieldwork experience. The orientation was well attended, not just by the fieldwork educators, but also their OT team leads, clinical site coordinators, and sites’ Director of Rehabilitation Medicine.

Attendees

• USC Chan faculty members Julie McLaughlin Gray, Ling Yu (Elena) Meng, and OTD residents Tsam (Sanny) Ning and Li Shan Wee.
• PKUHSC instructors Hui (Angela) Wang and Liguo Qian, and 1st cohort of students.
• China-Japan Friendship Hospital (Director of Department of Rehabilitation Medicine: Yuxiao Xie, Clinical Site Coordinator: Lijun Ge, OT Team Lead: Wenlin Yang, Fieldwork Educator: Tingjie Cui).
• Haidian Hospital (Director of Department of Rehabilitation Medicine: Shuai Tong, Clinical Site Coordinator: Wenting Wang, Fieldwork Educator: Ming Ma).
• Peking University Third Hospital (Fieldwork Educator: Zixiao Ru).

Both institutions collaborated on identifying and selecting qualified fieldwork educators in order to ensure that the master’s program at PKUHSC is of comparable standards to the entry-level master’s program at USC, which is accredited by the Accreditation Council of Occupational Therapy Education (ACOTE). According to ACOTE, fieldwork educators need to have graduated from a World Federation of Occupational Therapists (WFOT) approved academic program and to have worked as an occupational therapist for at least one year. When these standards were only partially met by the available onsite fieldwork educators, PKUHSC instructors and USC faculty provided additional mentorship through a remote supervision model.

The three fieldwork educators selected for this initial round of fieldwork placements have all graduated from Capital Medical University, the first WFOT-approved OT program in China, and have working experience as occupational therapists, ranging from 3 to 13 years. One was instrumental in establishing the occupational therapy department at their hospital. They are all very excited by the opportunity to mentor OT students at the graduate level and to adapt their evaluation methods of these students’ fieldwork performance to reflect graduate level expectations and PKUHSC’s program outcomes.

The Chan China Initiative team is also continuing to work closely with PKUHSC instructors to develop and finalize a supplement to their fieldwork manual to further support the Level II fieldwork experiences. This supplement will be specifically tailored to occupational therapy fieldwork education, and will detail expectations, suggestions on weekly progression, and resources for success for both students and fieldwork educators.

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