Residency Course

Fundamentals of Assessment and Treatment for Neurologic Physical Therapy

Faculty: Jenni Moore PT, DHS, Board Certified Neurologic Physical Therapist and T. George Hornby PT, PhD

Course Description

Neurologic physical therapists (PTs) assess and treat individuals with a variety of conditions that impact the nervous system. According to the Guide for PT practice 3.0, the PT examination includes collection of information about a person’s history, conducting a review of systems, and performing tests and measures. This comprehensive course will describe the critical components of application and interpretation of tests and measures, as well as how test results can be used to support clinical decision-making and guide intervention selection and delivery. Types of measures that can be used to screen for conditions, predict future function, and assess change over time (i.e. outcome measure) will be described, as well as important associated psychometric properties. Important concepts related to intervention selection and delivery will be described. These include selection and dosing of interventions using the FITT principle (i.e Frequency, Intensity, Time, Type). Several patient case examples are provided with opportunities for learners to assess their knowledge throughout the course. An emphasis of this course will be on clinical decision-making principles in neurologic clinical practice.

Learning Objectives

At the conclusion of this course, learners will be able to:

  1. Identify domains of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health

  2. Apply 5 ICF domains to a patient case scenario to identify appropriate measures for clinical practice

  3. Discuss 3 considerations for selection of standardized measures for clinical practice

  4. Describe how to use standardized measurement results to guide clinical decision-making

  5. Given a case, use the results of 3 standardized measures to inform the selection of 1 intervention to use in physical therapy

  6. Explain important parameters for dosing of rehabilitation interventions

  7. Provide definitions for 3 different types of standardized measures

  8. Explain 3 ways standardized measures can inform decision-making

  9. Define reliability

  10. Identify commonly used reliability statistics

  11. Describe considerations for critical appraisal of reliability studies

  12. Define the standard error of measurement (SEM), minimum detectable change (MDC), and minimum clinical important difference (MCID)

  13. Describe how the SEM, MDC, and MCID should be used to assist in interpretation of research studies

  14. Apply the SEM, MDC, and MCID to clinical practice

  15. Define different types of validity

  16. Categorize validity testing results as excellent, adequate or poor

  17. Discuss application of validity testing in the context of test selection for clinical practice

  18. Define predictive validity

  19. Describe sensitivity and specificity

  20. Explain predictive values

  21. Define floor and ceiling effects

  22. Describe considerations for clinical practice related to floor and ceiling effects

  23. Discuss the importance of standardizing measures in clinical practice

  24. Describe important considerations for standardization

The online course will be launched in Aug, 2019

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