Professional Experience Placement

During 2012, the UTAS School of Nursing and Midwifery (SNM) undertook a pilot project to explore the utilisation of a dedicated clinical facilitator model for supporting students in two regions that are classed are rural, community or non-traditional health environments. It was part of a Health Workforce Australia funded program known as the Tasmanian Clinical Partnerships Project aimed to increase capacity of health organisations in providing placements for students. This project aimed to provided a high quality professional placement experience for students, clinical supervisors and organisations by developing a framework that supported stakeholders in situ.

The project was evaluated by on-line survey before and after the trial of providing a dedicated clinical supervisor for 8 students in practice in various health facilities within the two pilot regions. Support was provided by the academic liaison who facilited the project. The findings of the evaluation indicated that participants recognised the value of experiential learning and deepened student understanding of working within a rural, community or non-traditional area of nursing practice. Students indicated they were generally valued as contributing members of their team and creating a postiive learning environment. Preceptors acknowledged it enabled them to remain contemporary in their practice.

It was also found that at times the increased number of students added pressure to already busy workloads and there were times when there were too many students to enable them to develop clinical skills. Accommodation was also an issue.

With modifications to the model, it has potential to be utilised in other rural, community or non-traditional settings. One of the benefits of this project has been the development of transparent communications and collaborative partnerships between health organisations in these regions and the SNM. For the partnerships to continue to ensure that students have high quality placements, preceptors and professional experience supervisors will continue to require access to resources and support from the SNM.

Future directions suggested enabling interprofessional opportunities to minimise the impact of students on preceptors and enable students to engage in social culture in their placement communities. Additionally, careful planning to coordinate placement and rostering, coupled with transport and accommodation requirements were imperative.

This information for this post came from  the evaluation report titled ‘Clinical facilitator supervision/ support model for nursing students and preceptors/nurse supervisors undergoing professional experience placement (PEP) within rural health facilities and non-tradiitonal health providers: Pilot project’ by Helen Zournazis and Annette Marlow (2012). If you have any comments or questions about this evaluation please post them here.