Yes / Practice placements are a fundamental aspect of preparing students for working in the NHS and will influence where, and in what specialities, students work. Additionally, NHS leaders now consider the issues of recruitment and retention of NHS staff to be as serious as concerns over funding. NHS Providers have outlined the issues although there appears to be little, or no, consideration in terms of plans required for the most immediate future workforce. It is hypothesised that there is link between student healthcare placement capacity and workforce gaps. The policy of increasing training places and of funding practice placements may have a positive effect on practice placement provision and if so contribute to increasing the NHS workforce, but without further detail this impact remains unknown. Along with most aspects of service delivery, planning practice placements using the best available evidence will ensure that the impact on service delivery is minimised while maximising the experience for the next generation of NHS employees.

Bakgrund: Sjuksköterskestudenter kan känna sig sårbara i början av sin verksamhetsförlagda utbildning (VFU) och kan påverkas både positivt och negativt av bemötandet från både handledare och övrig personalgrupp. Syfte: Att undersöka sjuksköterskestudenters upplevelser av bemötande från handledare och övrig personalgrupp och hur detta påverkar förmågan att utföra omvårdnad, samt studenternas upplevelse av studentrollen. Metod: Kvalitativ forskningsdesign med fem semistrukturerade intervjuer. Resultat: Resultatet delades in i tre huvudkategorier: Bemötande från handledare; Bemötande från övrig personalgrupp och Studentroll. Ett bra bemötande karaktäriserades av vänlighet, involvering i arbetet och förmedlande av trygghet. Ett dåligt bemötande kunde bestå av försummelse, att känna sig i vägen och dålig struktur. Studenterna hade haft skiftande roller under VFU och samtliga hade positiva aspekter. Studenterna upplevde att de hade utvecklats i sin förmåga att utföra omvårdnad. Slutsats: Studien påvisar att det är viktigt för studenter hur de blir bemötta på sin VFU, och vilken roll de får på arbetsplatsen. Den visar även att det är betydelsefullt att samtliga ur personalgruppen visar studenten ett bra bemötande. En undersköterskeroll kan vara utvecklande för sjuksköterskestudenter i termin två. Det förekommer dock negativa aspekter i bemötande från handledare och personalgrupp, vilket tyder på att studentens roll på VFU bör förtydligas. / Background: Nursing students may feel vulnerable in the beginning of a clinical practice placement. The relationship and interaction with their preceptors and other staff members can have a positive as well as a negative effect on the nursing student. Aim: To investigate nursing students’ experiences of the relationship and interaction with their preceptors and other staff members and the influence these factors have on their ability to perform nursing care, and also how the students experienced the student role. Method: Qualitative design with five semi-structured interviews. Result: The result was divided into three main categories: Relationship and interaction from preceptors; Relationship and interaction from other staff members and Student role. A good relationship and interaction was characterised by kindness, involvement in tasks and a sensation of safety. A bad relationship and interaction would consist of neglect, the sensation of being in the way and a bad structure. The students had a variety of roles that emerged during their clinical practice which all had positive aspects on their ability to perform nursing care. Conclusion: The study presented how important the relationship and interaction with the preceptors and other staff members are for nursing students during their clinical practice placement. As important is the role the student acquires. The study presents the importance of a good relationship with all staff members. A health care assistant role can be of value for nursing students during their first clinical practice placement. Certain negative aspects emerged indicating that clarifying information about the student role during clinical practice placement is needed.

Physiotherapy student practice education, the focus of this thesis, is a highly valued, yet scarcely researched component of pre-registration physiotherapy education. Moreover, the student voice is largely absent from existing research. In this study, 14 physiotherapy students’ perspectives of practice education were gained through email communications (n=13) and face-to-face interviews (n=12). To provide an in-depth and provocative view, physiotherapy student practice education was analysed as a type of activity system, employing concepts borrowed from cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT). Interacting activity systems, objects, players, rules, norms, divisions of labour, mediating artefacts, intra- and inter-systemic contradictions were explored and identified. The findings show that assessment skewed students’ object motives. Practice educators were positioned as powerful gatekeeper/assessor gift-holders. Physiotherapy students enacted ‘learning practice’ norms, such as extensive reading, and adopted the position of practice educator-pleaser. Students sometimes refrained from speaking when they wanted to, for example, to challenge unprofessional staff behaviour. Students were reluctant to show themselves as learners, feeling instead that they needed to present themselves as knowledgeable, able practitioners. However, students did not easily recognise themselves as able contributors to practice. For students, knowledge for practice was focussed on patient assessment and treatment, but the level, depth and volume of knowledge required was perceived differently across distinctive practice areas. Intra- and inter-systemic contradictions, such as the skewing of student object motives towards assessment, and away from whole-patient-centred care, are highlighted. The study findings therefore have implications for patient care as well as for the object of physiotherapy student practice education, student learning and assessment and workplace learning. A cross-profession review of the object of physiotherapy student practice education, to include the voice of service users, students, practice educators, HEIs and service providers, is recommended. A review of physiotherapy student practice-placement assessment, which seemed to be at the core of PSPE dynamics and conditions, is recommended, to take account of the extent to which assessment can influence students’ PSPE object motives, PE/student dynamics and student/patient interactions. Developmental Work Research is proposed as a way forward for future research in this area.

No / The aim of this study was to evaluate newly developed performance feedback tools from the student perspective. The tools were innovative in both their mode of delivery and the range of stakeholders they involved in the feedback process. By using the tools in health and social care settings, students were able to engage in interprofessional assessment of common competences and obtain performance feedback from a range of stakeholders not commonly involved in work-based learning; these included peers and service users. This paper discusses the ways in which the performance feedback tools were developed by a collaborative programme and compares their delivery, across a wide range of professions and work-based settings, in paper-based, web-based and mobile formats. The tools were evaluated through a series of profession-specific focus groups involving 85 students and 7 professions. The data were analysed thematically and reduced to three key categories: mode of delivery, assessment tool dynamics and work-based issues. These will be discussed in detail. The students agreed that the structured way of capturing and documenting feedback from several sources would support their practice placement learning. The reflective nature of the tools and the capacity for guiding reflection was also welcomed. The concepts of gaining service user, peer and/or interprofessional feedback on performance were new to some professions and evoked questions of reliability and validity, alongside appreciation of the value they added to the assessment process.

No / In this article we share our experiences of a large-scale five-year innovative programme to introduce mobile learning into health and social care (HSC) practice placement learning and assessment that bridges the divide between the university classroom and the practice setting in which these students learn. The outputs are from the Assessment Learning in Practice Settings (ALPS) Centre for Excellence in Teaching Learning (CETL), which is working towards a framework of interprofessional assessment of Common Competences in the HSC professions. The mobile assessment process and tools that have been developed and implemented and the outcomes of the first-stage evaluation of the mobile assessment tools are discussed from the student perspective.