The Mentor Playbook: Evidence-Based Strategies to Develop, Support, and Retain Rehabilitation Professionals

Clinical expertise alone does not prepare clinicians to become effective mentors. As today’s rehabilitation workforce evolves, supervisors are increasingly expected to foster clinical reasoning, confidence, professional growth, and long-term engagement among students, Clinical Fellows, new hires, assistants, and experienced clinicians alike.

This interactive course provides supervisors, mentors, and clinical leaders with a practical mentorship framework that can be immediately implemented across speech-language pathology, occupational therapy, and physical therapy settings. Participants will learn how to move beyond simply overseeing performance to intentionally coaching clinicians through reflective conversations, meaningful feedback, individualized development plans, and structured mentorship meetings.
Using evidence-informed mentorship strategies and current workforce research, participants will explore methods for supporting clinician confidence, promoting critical thinking, recognizing burnout risk factors, and creating mentorship experiences that contribute to stronger clinician engagement and retention. Participants will leave with a practical mentorship blueprint that can be adapted to a variety of rehabilitation settings.

Following this course, participants will be able to:

1. Differentiate between supervision, leadership, and mentorship when supporting rehabilitation professionals.
2. Implement at least five evidence-informed mentorship strategies that promote clinician confidence, clinical reasoning, and professional growth.
3. Demonstrate the use of reflective coaching questions and structured feedback techniques during mentorship conversations.
4. Develop a mentorship implementation plan that includes meeting structure, individualized goal setting, and ongoing clinician support.

This course meets the requirement for Professional Development hours towards your ASHA renewal since it is approved by TSHA! You can count these hours towards ASHA renewal when you submit your Compliance Form.

Important for Texas OT practitioners: Although this course supports personal and /or professional growth and workplace effectiveness, the Texas OT Board does not currently recognize this topic area as eligible for continuing education credit for OT licensure renewal. Therefore, TOTA approval is not available for this course.