Virginia Physical Therapy Education Travels Abroad

By Kyle Feldman PT, DPT, OCS, CSCS, FAAOMPT

Shenandoah University taught me two amazing lessons: how to become a caring physical therapist and how to become a global citizen. I learned that understanding the material in class was not enough, I learned that making a paycheck was not enough and I learned that we were gaining skills in school to make a larger impact on society locally and abroad.

Fast forward four years and I am still heeding the advice of my professors to focus on making an impact beyond the Commonwealth borders. In August 2018, I had the privilege of working with The Jackson Clinics of Northern Virginia as a mentor of the OMPT residency program located in Nairobi, Kenya. The residency has been improving the clinical reasoning and quality of physical therapy care in Kenya for 7 years under the brilliant vision of Richard Jackson. I was honored to join the program as a clinical mentor alongside Emily Horst of The Jackson Clinics for two weeks. During my time in Kenya I learned so much about the culture, medical system and education process. I attempted to provide each student with some insight into improving clinical reasoning and examination skills while treating patients. The highlight of the trip was the amount of questions and discussion during my inservice on clinical reasoning. The students were eager to learn and challenged the current thought process with the ideas mentioned in the lecture. During any downtime between patients, the students were always asking to learn more and improve their skills. Kenya was such a great experience for myself as a new mentor and helped me to improve my understanding for the Kenyan culture. I only hope the students gained skills that will improve their clinical practice as well.

In October, I had the honor of traveling to Leogane, Haiti to teach the Advanced Manual Therapy course to fourth year bachelor degree physical therapy students. I spent many hours over the 10 months leading up to the trip writing and developing the course syllabus, content and exams. I have such a higher appreciation for professors after this prep work experience. While in country, we had an intensive one week course for eight hours per day including lecture and lab. The students excelled with the large amount of material and skills presented in such a short time. They worked hard to learn the  higher-level manual skills and critical thinking they was very different compared to the strong emphasis on modalities and simple exercises currently practiced in the clinics where they are doing clinical rotations. As some of the first therapists to have a bachelor degree in physiotherapy, these students will be pioneers for the future of Haitian healthcare. I tried to help give them the confidence to challenge the status quo and push the standards higher. They are going to be a great asset to their country when they graduate. At the end of the week, I was humbled by the insight they provided me about my teaching style and their own growth from the few short days together. I know I gained as much of them as they did from me and I made sure to express that to them.

Virginia has some of the best therapists in the country. I am so proud to be able to practice and learn from the best. My goal is to share that information with as many people as possible. These two trips allowed me to start towards my goal.

If you would like to read more about these trip please follow my blog. 

Kenya- https://mobilizetheworldpt.blogspot.com/2018/08/sunday-arrival-in-kenya.html

Haiti- https://mobilizetheworldpt.blogspot.com/2018/10/teaching-day-1.html

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