You’re going to become a better person. You’re going to come out a fantastic clinician.
But you’re also going to have an amazing time. You’re going to meet some lifelong
friends, you’re going to meet lifelong mentors… and you’re going to have people that are
genuinely interested in your development.
We’re like a family. We do everything together.
Everyone wants you to succeed – your classmates, your professors, your peers. They’re all
there for you, they're all a part of the UD community, and you just feel like you belong.
Coming in everyday, knowing that people are genuinely interested in your development and
are genuinely interested in how your day is going and making you the best you can possibly
be.
We want our students to succeed so we put things into place to help them succeed. Part
of that is the small group learning and hands on learning that we do with our students.
That can take place in the labs, whether it’s orthopedic or neuro or pediatrics. And we
teach the students the skills they will need to be a successful physical therapists.
The hands-on experience comes in, you know, within the first two weeks that you’re even
here -- learning how to do range of motions and manual motion testing. I think that’s
so important because in our field, it’s very hands-on.
Even on my second clinical, my CI told me that she’s – she was so happy to have
me because she could actually learn from me, from my manual skills because they teach it
so well here.
One of my favorite labs was the spinal cord injury lab where they brought in five or six
individuals who have actually had spinal cord injuries and we could ask them anything…when
we’re out on our own and we have that spinal cord injury patient in front of us, we know
what to do because we’ve already been there.
We try to expose them to as many practical and real-life scenarios as we can. So our
faculty does a lot of pro bono work, so we bring in patients. We bring in really kind
of special cases where there are really neat lessons learned, clinical pearls. It gives
our students the opportunity to interact, ask questions in a more candid way that is
different from their clinical internships.
I really like that its service oriented being a Catholic school and Marianist.
We do a lot of volunteering in our community
We also have what’s called problem-based learning, which is very unique to the University
of Dayton.
We’re given a case study but then we come up with objectives and each student goes out
and studies that case on their own…and then we come back and we hash it out together and
discuss it.
You’re sitting there in a group of people who are really smart, and they have different
strengths and different interests. So, you’re all educating and teaching each other.
We are actively involved in our learning. Through conversation, we are forced to problem
solve. We’re challenged to look at a case and look at it from a 360-degree perspective.
And then they go seek the answers, which helps them be able to connect the dots between the
lecture and the lab in truly relevant clinical scenarios.
Foremost, we want the students to be knowledgeable so they learn the content. But, with problem-based
learning, they acquire this knowledge in context. So it’s more memorable to them and it’s
more applicable for them later in life.
And to me, that – when I went out into the clinic this summer, that’s something that
I believe put me ahead.
Every time I go out on my clinical, it’s just we love your students, we love your students.
UD always brings very quality people. I think it’s that genuine passion and commitment
to the patient, commitment to service and community that sets UD therapists apart.
I really feel prepared. I’m ready, I’m really ready to go out on my own and change
people’s lives.