Purpose: This study investigated the methods of assessing clinical competence of physiotherapy undergraduates in Nigeria.

Relevance: Practical clinical examinations are of key importance in the assessment of clinical competence of physiotherapy undergraduates all over the world.
Participants: Forty-seven (35males, 12females) physiotherapy educators recruited from all seven academic institutions where physiotherapy is taught in Nigeria, participated in this cross-sectional population-based survey.
Methods: A self-developed validated questionnaire was used to assess the methods of clinical examinations used in physiotherapy undergraduate training in Nigeria. Items on the developed questionnaires were devised through a review of literature of the components of the different methods of clinical examinations. Questionnaire was administered through a purposive sampling method.
Analysis: Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics of mean, standard deviation and percentages.
Results: Participants were aged 40.9±8.6 years. Majority (89.4%) of the participants had postgraduate qualifications. Nineteen (40.4%) participants reported that they had received formal training on methods of clinical assessment prior to this study. Only 4 (8.5%) of the participants reported that the long case was the method of assessing clinical competence. The OSLER was reported by 6 (12.8%) of the participants. PACES was reported by 7 participants (14.9%) while 6 participants (12.8%) reported the use of OSCE as their assessment method.

Conclusions: It can be concluded from this study that many physiotherapy educators had not received formal training in the assessment of clinical competence of their students. There is no exclusive method of assessing clinical competence of physiotherapy undergraduates in Nigeria.

Implications: Efforts should be made by management of the various academic institutions to organise workshops and training programmes for the educators who had no formal training and retrain those who have had formal training. This is hoped to translate into better clinical education of physiotherapy students in training.

Keywords: Clinical competence, Assessment, Undergraduate students, Physiotherapy education.

Funding: This study was unfunded.