Two PT Alums Achieve Rare Perfect Scores on National Exam

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Shortly right after graduating in 2022, Antonio Martinez, remaining, and Rush Hemphill realized excellent scores on the nationwide bodily remedy assessment.

March 2, 2023 | Hurry Hemphill and Antonio Martinez had to move the Nationwide Physical Treatment Evaluation to get started their careers, and in the summer of 2022, they aced it, earning ideal 800 scores.

Equally graduated in May with Doctor of Actual physical Treatment (DPT) levels following three several years of study in the UAMS College of Well being Professions Division of Physical Therapy at the UAMS Northwest Regional Campus in Fayetteville. They are training physical therapists these days — Hemphill at A. Yumang Rehab Providers in Fayetteville and Martinez at Athletico Actual physical Treatment in Plano, Texas.

In 2021, Abbey Belote, a graduate of the DPT Class of 2021, also accomplished a great score on the countrywide examination.

Soon after he graduated, Hemphill took a two-month break just before commencing a work. He set a agenda and employed the time to analyze intensively, focusing on areas where he considered his information to be the weakest.

He also took some online exam preparing courses that assisted him identify what all those weak locations were being and attended some on the web “boot camps” for them. Hemphill also took a few comprehensive follow examinations.

“It aided practice my mind to get prepared for the long exam,” he claimed.

Given only a few periods each and every 12 months, the assessment lasts about 5 hours with only one particular scheduled crack.

“It’s a tiny stress filled,” Martinez mentioned.

His graduation was on a Saturday in May perhaps, and by the adhering to Monday, he had begun his new task, functioning on a short term license. Not only did he truly feel like his qualified long run was using on his test overall performance, Martinez felt like his current employment was as well.

“I tried to devote time evenings and weekends likely by way of practice challenges and exams, but I also was employing what I was looking at with my sufferers as a way to find out and prepare as nicely,” he said. “Never in my wildest desires did I believe I was going to appear out with a excellent score. I instructed people today I was ‘cautiously optimistic’ about the effects. I felt great and believed I experienced passed, but I hardly ever would have imagined that I would get a best score.”

Hemphill said he was equally astonished.

In addition to their tricky operate, Hemphill and Martinez credited two elements for their achievements: to start with, the people today in the UAMS Division of Actual physical Treatment — their professors, instructors and even fellow classmates — and the classroom didactic design in which they all taught and figured out.

“The section takes advantage of a well-created, flipped classroom composition,” Martinez said. “Learning from textbooks and other materials we did beforehand, then we would converse by scenarios and how we would method them. That was a distinct approach compared to other systems. It was not just guide know-how but how to choose that information and combine it into genuine cases with authentic patients.”

Hemphill agreed the software did an helpful task of emphasizing energetic finding out.

“Doing self-examine, then group active studying and then sensible software in that sequence was seriously great for finding out the content, not just looking through it and repeating it the next day,” he stated.

Martinez reported he learned a little something at each individual section, but discovered talking via the situation scientific tests with his fellow classmates and coming up with solutions for the people in them was intellectually and professionally enriching. It also organized him nicely for his occupation.

“I begun looking at people on my second working day after graduation,” Martinez claimed. “I however have factors to discover, but I know I can do that. I don’t think I arrive across as a ‘new grad therapist.’ It feels like I have been doing it a though.”