Acquired Brain Injury Education: Utilizing Unfolding Case Studies to Improve Critical Thinking Skills in Occupational Therapy Students

Acquired brain injuries (ABI), including traumatic brain injury, stroke, and anoxia, affect millions worldwide, and often result in long-term impairments in daily functioning. Despite the need for specialized, ongoing care, many individuals with ABI lack access to adequate long-term rehabilitation services, and families report substantial caregiver burden due to limited resources and poor care coordination. Occupational therapy plays a critical role in meeting the needs of this population; however, many entry-level practitioners feel underprepared to manage the complex challenges associated with ABI, largely due to limited training and exposure. This capstone project aimed to address this educational gap by implementing an unfolding case study to enhance the critical thinking skills of occupational therapy doctoral students. The project included an advanced clinical practice focused on ABI followed by the development, implementation, and analysis of an unfolding case study. A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design was utilized to assess changes in students’ self-perceived critical thinking skills across three domains: analysis, explanation, and interpretation. Descriptive statistics indicated improvements across all three domains following the intervention. The greatest gains were observed in the domain of explanation, likely due to the case study’s emphasis on synthesizing clinical information and articulating clinical decisions in dynamic, real-world scenarios. These findings support the effectiveness of unfolding case study methodologies in fostering critical thinking skills related to ABI, an essential component of clinical reasoning.