Develop your skills as a clinician and educator
UIC’s orthopedic physical therapy residency is a 13-month full-time specialized clinical learning experience in an academic faculty practice. Our program challenges and expands your clinical reasoning capabilities, and enhances skills for effective teaching and mentoring.
This exceptional clinical experience will offer a wealth of opportunities for you to develop your skills not only as an orthopedic practitioner, but also as an educator. Improve your teaching effectiveness by providing numerous presentations in lecture format to clinical faculty, fellow residents, DPT students and local therapists.
We expose our residents to the unique culture of an academic medical center while receiving direct mentorship from UIC faculty members. Dedicated debriefing sessions immediately after evaluating a new patient optimize the learning experience, and manual skills labs dedicate time to develop and practice hands-on skills with your mentor team.
You’ll have the opportunity to collaborate with internationally recognized researchers, with access to state of the art research equipment. Residents also complete a Capstone Project resulting in submission for presentation at the Combined Sections Meeting of the APTA.
Our program gives you the opportunity to provide hands-on patient care 30 hours per week at our Faculty Practice, while working alongside UIC clinical faculty. The balance of your time will be spent in ongoing formal training and personal development.
You’ll participate in resident presentations, reviewing clinical practice guidelines and preparing and delivering critically appraised topics with the intent of answering your own specific clinical questions. Our residents provide classroom instruction within the UIC DPT program curriculum, and attend clinical faculty and guest lectures.
In the first 3 months of the residency, we’ll cover topics like:
You’ll also have an online education portal available to review relevant anatomy and personal video sessions, helping you advance your skills and knowledge.
August 1
Our orthopedic outpatient physical therapy faculty practice is embedded in the Chicago community, providing high-quality physical therapy services in a convenient location.
Focus: manual therapy, lumbar spine, over head athletes, return to sport and injury prevention
Focus: return to sport, manual therapy, pain science and clinical education
You can participate in research in state-of-the-art labs throughout the university, or pursue a clinical-educator track, which trains you to teach physical therapy students. Completing the program will earn you a graduate certificate in clinical research or clinical education, comprising 20 graduate credits that can be applied toward a PhD.
Under the mentorship of a senior core faculty member, the clinical educator track teaches you to develop and deliver lectures and become a more effective a clinical educator for physical therapy students. You’ll enroll in PT 594 Special Topics in Rehabilitation: Teaching and Education Development.
If you’re interested in enhancing your communication skills or see yourself moving into a more formal educational role in the future, this may be the right track for you.
The clinical research track teaches you how to participate in clinical research trials, working through developing the investigation, obtaining IRB approval, subject consent, data collection, abstract/manuscript preparation, and submission. You’ll enroll in PT 598 Research in Rehabilitation, where you’ll work with a faculty member to conduct independent research in one area of rehabilitation sciences.
Still wondering what a residency in orthopedic physical therapy can do for you? Contact Dr. Aaron Keil and get your questions answered.
