Physical Therapy Board of California
Regulations
Clinical Service Requirements for Foreign Educated Applicants
Amends section 1398.26.5 of Article 2 of Division 13.2, Title 16 of the California Code of Regulations (CCR).
CCR Section 1398.26.5 requires applicants who are graduates of non-accredited physical therapy education programs that are not located in the United States to demonstrate clinical competence through a period of clinical service supervised by a licensed physical therapist. Subsections (a) and (c) specify that at least one supervising physical therapist be the Center Coordinator of Clinical Education (CCCE) and/or the Clinical Instructor (CI), as defined by the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA). Subsection (d) requires that the CCCE and/or the CI report the clinical service evaluation of the physical therapist applicant on the Physical Therapist Clinical Performance Instrument (CPI) issued by the APTA.
The amendments to CCR Section 1398.26.5 would allow for use of the Federation of State Boards of Physical Therapy’s (FSBPT) Supervised Clinical Practice Performance Evaluation Tool (PET), as an alternative to use of the APTA’s CPI. Additionally, the amendments make non-substantive changes such as replacing the word “credentialed” for “certified” in reference to the CI. This is consistent with APTA’s terminology and adds clarity to the regulation, since it eliminates confusion between the clinical service being certified and the CI’s being certified. This regulation also corrects a typographical error in subsection (d) by replacing the word “elevations” with “evaluations.”