Provision of information on visually-impaired students to a clinical training institution and its corresponding benefits

<p>The physical therapy students of the Tsukuba University of Technology are visually impaired. We designed and created an original sheet for providing information on the visual performance of the individual students to a clinical training institution. This study examined the benefits that the sheets can provide to both the students and instructors. One benefit was that by filling in information in the sheet, the students could once again accept their disability. The sheets were also frequently used by the instructors at the training institution, who were highly satisfied with the sheets. These findings suggested that the sheets enabled information on the visual performance of the students to be reliably shared (intelligence shared) between the students and instructors, and thus reduce the burden on the instructors. On the contrary, since the instructors often do not have sufficient knowledge of visual impairment in the educational environment, the information in the sheets might not be used effectively. In the future, it is important to provide the students with opportunities to accept their disabilities by filling in the sheets and to provide the instructors with medical information on visual impairment.</p>