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Rachel is physiotherapist who has been teaching in Higher Education for 10 years; CSU is the fifth university she has taught at. From the United Kingdom, she obtained extensive clinical experience of 13 years in the cardiorespiratory field, specialising in critical care and major surgeries including cardiothoracics and abdominal surgery and was also a tracheostomy specialist for 2 years. She has worked in large teaching hospitals in the UK in Exeter, London and Oxford and also worked in large universities such as Manchester Metropolitan and Sheffield Hallam.

Within Higher Education, Rachel has extensive experience of curriculum design and delivery. As an educator, she is interested in the final stages of undergraduate training and how graduates cope with the transition into qualified physiotherapy practice; do we enable our graduates to be ‘fit for purpose’ particularly in the non-traditional setting?

Roles and Positions

• Lecturer for the Physiotherapy program

Teaching

Rachel has  achieved extensive educational experience before making the transition into full-time education. In 2010, she became a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in the U.K., a qualification that reflects high quality involvement, innovation and delivery of education according to the Academy’s six core values. It is a nationally recognised award but can be transferred internationally as the professional values are integral to any university ethos, for example, curriculum design, planning and delivery; assessment and feedback; student support; scholarly activity, and professional development and evaluation.

Rachel has a passion for teaching, rewarded in recent years by the nomination for the university-wide ‘Inspirational Teacher’ award and receiving the award of ‘Lecturer of the Year’ – both nominated by the physiotherapy student body at Sheffield Hallam University. She is a versatile lecturer and has taught extensively across core physiotherapy subjects throughout the undergraduate curriculum. She enjoys teaching on professional/transitional/employment issues and challenging students to consider complex case management.

Rachel has extensive experience of inter-disciplinary teaching and inter-professional learning and its delivery. She has taught at undergraduate and postgraduate level on research subjects and has extensive experience of dissertation supervision at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. She is also an experienced assessor of written, practical and oral examinations across a range of subjects at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. As an experienced subject co-ordinator and examiner, Rachel has an understanding of how transparency and equity during assessment and moderation processes impact on the student experience; with this in mind, she is clear on the importance of developing alternative re-assessment packages as well as embedding formative assessment strategies into subject content.

Subjects Delivered

• PHS301: Acute Care Physiotherapy Practice
• PHS402: Advanced Preparation for Physiotherapy Practice

Innovations on Teaching

Simulation technology has made a positive change to health care education, though it has its limitations. ‘Simman’ is invaluable in providing a safe environment for students to practice real time assessment and treatment, as well as discuss changes in the clinical presentation. As part of a postgraduate respiratory subject at Sheffield Hallam University, Rachel introduced Simman within the summative assessment. Real-time assessment and problem solving was integral to this task with the ‘patients’ varying from acute head injury to various causes of respiratory dysfunction. This innovation was so popular with the staff that, the following year, it was introduced into the summative respiratory assessments at undergraduate level.

Recent advances in educational technology have enabled Rachel to explore immersion technology and its benefits to physiotherapy education. Immersion technology not only provides a completely different learning environment for students but it brings to life anatomical structures and physiological concepts by way of 3D visualisation. Physiotherapy resources for such technology need to be further considered and developed but, this is a perfect forum through which range of motion, interdependency of anatomical units and physiological interactions can be visualised. Development of the 3D resources could potentially be done by Masters and PhD physiotherapy students who understand what and how a physiotherapy student needs to learn.

In her role as Admissions Tutor at Sheffield Hallam University, Rachel had to demonstrate inclusive practices in the marketing material and throughout the selection and recruitment strategies. This involved the revision of presentation materials to cater for those with dyslexia and the consideration of inclusive practice during interview sessions for those with dyslexia or visual/hearing impairment. On one occasion, she had to involve the Royal National Institute for the Blind to advise about a completely blind applicant who was holding a place with the university. Being inclusive of disability is obviously unchartered territory for the Physiotherapy profession but educational institutions are setting precedents for the future. In addition, all Admissions Tutors were required to produce evidence of good practice which involved producing high quality documentation and audit trails. For two years, Rachel worked with the University Systems Management team to implement into practice an effective database which stored recruitment information for all physiotherapy applicants through to enrolment.

Rachel has also been involved in the design and implementation of online MCQs tests through Blackboard/Blackboard 9 and Blended learning packages such as the use of Wikis.

Research and Publications

Rachel will be enrolling in her PhD in early 2014. Her research interests include exploring professional practice issues for final-year students and early graduates, the implementation of preceptorship and the consideration of the principles of graduate support programmes being embedded in the undergraduate curriculum.

Key research interests:

• The principles of preceptorship applied at undergraduate level to 'bridge' the theory-practice gap
• Metaphors for learning
• Perceptions of safe practice
• Promoting portfolio development in undergraduates
• Understanding movement patterns in the rehabilitation of the critically ill patient
• Use of PNF for critical care neuropathy
  Thoracic musculoskeletal therapy in chronic lung disease

List of Publications

• Crawford, R. (2011) ‘Using a post-qualifying preceptorship programme to explore the preparedness of final-year physiotherapy students for the transition into working as newly-qualified practitioners in the non-traditional setting: a qualitative study’. MA in Learning and Teaching, Sheffield Hallam University: Sheffield, U.K.
• Crawford, R. (2004) ‘The impact of a specialist tracheostomy practitioner on reducing adverse respiratory events in tracheostomised patients’. A poster presentation at the conference of the Intensive Care Society, May 2004: Torquay Conference Centre, U.K.
• Crawford, R. (2003) ‘Tracheostomy Management – Guidelines for Best Practice’. Oxford Radcliffe NHS Hospitals Trust: Oxford, U.K.
• Stiller, K., Crawford, R., McInnes, M., Montarello, J. and Hall, B. (1995) ‘The incidence of pulmonary complications in patients not receiving prophylactic chest physiotherapy after cardiac surgery’. Physiotherapy Theory & Practice 11 (4): 205-208.

Community Engagement

Memberships and Affiliations

• State Registered Physiotherapist (UK)
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (UK)
• Limited Registration for Teaching and Research, AHPRA