Winter 2026 Editorial

Title:
Accommodating Occupational Therapy Students in Acute Care: Fostering Equity and Excellence in Clinical Education

Authors:
Piper Hansen OTD, OTR/L, BCPR
Rebecca Ozelie DHS, OTR/L, FAOTA

JACOT Volume 8, Issue 1

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In acute care settings, practitioners are often asked to supervise occupational therapy (OT) and occupational therapy assistant (OTA) students for fieldwork or capstone experiences. Graduate and undergraduate students represent a diverse population with varying abilities and needs. These needs may include physical disabilities, sensory processing variations, mental health conditions, and learning
disabilities that require nuanced support in clinical settings. The National Center for Education Statistics (2023) reports that 11% of postbaccalaureate students reported having a disability. Ozelie and colleagues (2019) cited that up to 16.9 % of students reported having a disability while on fieldwork. Clinical accommodations are critical to ensuring equitable access to clinical education, particularly within acute care settings’ intense and complex environment.Acute care practice settings present a unique crucible for students, where split-second decisions, high-stakes patient interactions, and rapidly changing clinical presentations create a particularly challenging environment for students with diverse needs. Hospital based fieldwork placements demand not just practice skills but also exceptional adaptability, time management, management of complexity, sensory processing, and mental resilience (Khan, 2023; Oldenburg, et al., 2023). Traditional, one-size-fits-all approaches to clinical training may unintentionally limit the growth of talented students so OT and OTA academia aim to illuminate the importance of thoughtful, individualized accommodations for acute care fieldwork placements. By examining the multifaceted challenges faced by OT students with diverse abilities, we aim to challenge existing paradigms and promote a more inclusive, supportive approach to fieldwork in the acute care setting. The goal is not simply compliance with legal standards, but a fundamental reimagining of how we support and empower the next generation of OT professionals. For example, in an acute care placement a student with strong clinical reasoning and communication skills but requires additional processing time may struggle with time-sensitive documentation and chart review synthesis demands. Under a rigid, one-size-fits-all approach, this student might be unfairly judged as lacking competence, even though their clinical skills are exceptional. Providing individualized accommodations—such as access to documentation templates, speech-to-text technology, or adjusted timelines for charting—allows the student’s strengths to shine while still meeting clinical requirements.