title: Getting the most out of your clinical placement in district nursing.
abstract: The community placement is a vitally important part of any nurse's training, and the student has a responsibility to be proactive in learning from it. To this end, Northumbria University has pioneered a portfolio of learning opportunities (POLO) to provide students with a structure overview of the opportunities available to them during a placement and how to make the most of them. The POLO also assists mentors in framing their support of the student. In this article, a practice placement facilitator outlines the structure of a POLO, and argues for a more coherent approach to student placements.
authors.affiliation: North Tyneside PCT and Northumbria University, UK.
authors.forename: Lynn
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Dracup
mesh_terms: D002983:Clinical Competence; D003152:Community Health Nursing / Q000193:education* / Q000458:organization & administration; D004506:Education, Nursing / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006293:Health Promotion; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D010346:Patient Care Management; D013222:State Medicine; D013338:Students, Nursing; D006113:United Kingdom