For DPT programs
What a DCE needs to know before approving a site.
We work with more than sixty-five US programs and place students in 25 clinical sites across 3 countries. This page is the operational detail — supervision, assessment, scheduling and the paperwork — rather than the student-facing version.
At a glance
The numbers, from our live site records.
Weeks per rotation. 19 of our 25 sites accept a 6-week placement, so a shorter terminal rotation is usually workable.
Students at a site at once, at 19 of our 25 sites; 4 at the largest. Supervision is close by construction — your student is not competing with a cohort for a CI's attention.
Sites open year-round. The other 16 close for ferragosto and don't take students in July and August.
Sites needing no visa for US citizens on a stay of 90 days or less. We'll confirm the position for any site you're considering.
Supervision and assessment
Your instruments, used properly.
Clinical instructors
English-speaking, and trained on your instrument
Every CI we place a student with speaks English. Assessment runs on whichever tool your program uses — the electronic CPI including CPI 3.0 is the most common, and we work with the other instruments in general use, so nothing has to be translated back into your format. Our CIs are not simply hosting a student; they are teaching, and several sites run structured weekly teaching alongside the caseload.
Hours
Typically 35–40 per week
Monday to Friday, with the clinic day varying by site. Where a program requires additional hours, some sites can accommodate weekend time — ask us about the specific site and we'll confirm before you commit.
Site readiness
Safety training and dress code
19 of our sites require Italian workplace safety training, which ranges from a short asynchronous module to a 4-hour plus 12-hour course. 22 sites specify a dress code. Both are documented per site and handled before arrival.
Looking ahead
Ready for CEBE
Competency and entrustment-based education is changing how clinical performance gets judged, and an international placement is exactly where entrustment decisions get interesting — an unfamiliar system, an unfamiliar language, and a student who has to be trusted to act. We are set up to assess against entrustable professional activities (EPAs) alongside the instruments in use today, and a partner program pilots it with us from spring 2027. If your school is moving to CEBE, tell us how you're structuring it — we would rather build toward what programs actually need than guess at it.
On the ground
A team in-country
Our Vice President of European Operations and Senior Director of Student Services are both based in Italy and both practising physiotherapists. If something goes wrong at 2am in Pistoia, the person answering is twenty minutes away, not eight time zones.
Settings and caseload
Mostly outpatient, with real inpatient options.
The network skews outpatient orthopedic and sports, which suits most terminal rotations, but it isn't uniform. There are post-acute rehabilitation wards with brain injury, stroke and spinal cord injury; a large regional hospital; skilled nursing; a cardiopulmonary inpatient site; a leading hand centre; and a practice covering pelvic floor.
Every site page lists its settings, populations, caseload description, housing, commute and cost — so you can assess a placement against your curriculum before anyone applies, rather than after.
Other professions
Occupational therapy and athletic training.
Our network was built for physical therapy and most of it still is, but it isn't only that. We have occupational therapy availability at Ospedale San Giuseppe in Milan — a hand and wrist centre, surgical and non-surgical, where students also learn splinting — which suits an OT hand rotation unusually well.
We are also exploring placements for athletic trainers. Nothing is running yet, and we would rather shape it with programme directors who know what a good AT clinical experience needs than assemble something and hope. If that's your field, we'd welcome the conversation early, while it is still being designed.
Getting started
Affiliation agreements.
We work from your program's agreement wherever we can. Terms are reviewed individually — the arrangements differ between a public health system site and a private clinic, and across three countries — so we'd rather look at your paperwork early than discover a clause that needs discussion the week before a student flies.
Send us the agreement you use and we'll come back with anything that needs a conversation. If it would help for us to speak to your risk or contracts office directly, we're glad to.
First
Tell us the rotation length you run, the term you're planning for, and roughly how many students. That's usually enough for us to say which sites fit.
Then
We'll send site detail for the ones that match — caseload, CI, supervision, hours, and the practical arrangements for your student.
In parallel
Your agreement goes to us for review, and any site-specific requirements — safety training, dress code, documentation — get scheduled before arrival.
Places available · Fall 2027
We have room for students this coming fall.
Applications for 2028 open 1 January 2027, but Fall 2027 places are open now and handled directly.