Prosthetic and Orthotic curriculum development is often guided by expert opinion or consensus documents, which typically take the form of professional profiles and core competency descriptions. While these provide a useful depiction of the scope of professional practice, they may fail to reflect the complexity of knowledge that is necessary to work as a profession in O&P practice.

Many of the core concepts and principles that O&P professionals draw upon to inform their practice are likely concealed within the tacit knowledge of experienced practitioners. This knowledge may not be obvious to others and may be more comprehensive than experts themselves can articulate in survey or interview studies.

The goal of this research is to identify core concepts and principles that are used by experienced O&P professionals in the process of providing services to their clients. Once identified, core concepts and principles will be benchmarked against relevant standards and guidelines for O&P educational programs.

 

Project timeline: 2024 – 2026

Project team: Jessica Crafoord, Nerrolyn Ramstrand (JU), David Rusaw (JU), Louise Bæk Larsen (JU)

Funding agency: The National Commission on Orthotic and Prosthetic Education (USA)