• Students are required to be up to date on required immunizations and are required to complete a background check prior to the program, as well as a drug screen at some point during the program.
• The hepatitis B series does take time to complete; if you have been admitted or are expecting to be admitted to the program, the earlier you begin this process the better.
• Students who are not up to date and considered “non-compliant” will NOT be allowed to participate in clinical internships.

Students are required to complete 3 full-time (40 hours per week) clinical internships. These internships occur at the end of the program, following all didactic coursework.

• Clinical internship I occurs during the second half of summer semester from the end of June to the beginning of August, for 6 weeks.
• Clinical internship II occurs during the second fall semester from the end of August to the beginning of October, for 6 weeks.
• Clinical internship III occurs during the second fall semester from mid-October to the end of November, for 6 weeks.
• These timeframes are general; specific dates vary by year.

Students are required to complete internships in 3 settings:

• Skilled nursing facility (usually during the first internship).
• Inpatient acute care or inpatient rehab (hospital) setting.
• Outpatient orthopedic setting. Students can also complete an internship in a specialty setting (pediatrics, pelvic health, hand therapy, etc.) in place of the outpatient setting.

Students are expected to follow the same schedule as their clinical instructor. In the skilled nursing and hospital settings, some weekend work or holiday work may be required.

Professional dress and behaviors are expected during clinicals. Please refer to the Student Handbook beginning on page 26 for specifics on dress code and other clinical information

Instruction is provided by clinical instructors (CIs), who are working clinicians who have a passion for our profession and for teaching future clinicians and have agreed to mentor students in the clinic. They do this in addition to carrying a full patient load. Students are expected to be respectful of the contributions of our CI through their behavior, dress, and openness to learning.

Our program uses Exxat to manage clinical placements. This platform is fairly straightforward, and most clinical correspondence is done through this system. Please visit exxat.com/for-clinicians for helpful tips in using Exxat; most importantly, you DO NOT need a login!

CIET Training

Our program utilizes the Clinical Internship Evaluation Tool (CIET) to evaluate clinical performance. While like the CPI, it does differ in performance markers, format, and length. As such, there is a short training that must be completed prior to completing the CIET for the first time. This training only needs to be completed once, and the training has been approved for 1 hour of CEU’s through APTA Utah. The training can be found by following the link above, where you will be asked to create a free account. Following a brief post-test, you will be sent a completion certificate. 

Questions about the difference between working with a PTA student vs PT student? This short video will provide a brief overview of the PTA role and scope. Further questions can be directly to the ACCE.

Do you really enjoy teaching and working with students? Have you ever considered taking 2 students at once? At first this may sound intimidating (and more work!), but it really isn’t! This model, known as the collaborative or 2:1 model, is shown in the literature to be very effective and quite liked by both CIs and students, and is encouraged by all the PT/PTA education programs in Utah! Rocky Mountain University offers a free course on this model that can be found here; just look for the course called “Leading an Intraprofessional Student Team”.