• To learn about a project that explored healthcare students’ experiences of clinical placements
• To understand some of the factors that can affect the quality of clinical placements
• To recognise the potential benefits of student-led clinical learning environments
Over the past few years, efforts to address a shortage of nurses in the UK has led to an increase in nursing student numbers. However, in one large UK healthcare trust, this increase in student numbers led to a need to improve the quality of the trust’s clinical placements. To address this issue, the authors undertook a quality improvement project, in which focus groups were used to enable 53 nursing, allied health professional, midwifery and nursing associate students to have in-depth discussions about their clinical placement experiences in the trust. Three main themes emerged from the data: being part of a team; support; and being unprepared. Following the project, the trust introduced student-led clinical learning environments to provide an innovative practice-based experience for students.
Nursing Standard. doi: 10.7748/ns.2022.e11887
Peer reviewThis article has been subject to external double-blind peer review and checked for plagiarism using automated software
Correspondence Conflict of interestNone declared
Pearce R, Topping A, Willis C (2022) Enhancing healthcare students’ clinical placement experiences. Nursing Standard. doi: 10.7748/ns.2022.e11887
Published online: 14 March 2022
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