Nursing students' experiences of clinical placement in community settings: a qualitative study.
BACKGROUND
Changing community demographics and the rising incidence of chronic and complex conditions has exacerbated the primary care workload. Encouraging beginning nurses to view primary care nursing as a viable career option will help alleviate the workforce stress of this specialty. Whilst higher education institutions (HEI's) have increased the exposure of pre-registration nurses to community settings, there has been limited exploration of this experience from the perspective of pre-registration nurses. As potential key service providers, it is important to identify factors which influence how pre-registration nurses view primary care placements in the community.


OBJECTIVE
This study seeks to explore the experiences of pre-registration nursing students following community based clinical placements and to explore the impact of this placement on their learning.


METHODS
A qualitative design was employed in this study.


METHODS
Nine pre-registration nursing students were recruited from a research intensive single campus of an Australian university.


METHODS
In-depth semi-structured interviews.


RESULTS
Findings are presented in the following four themes: (1) autonomy in practice: "you make your own decisions", (2) working with highly skilled nurses: "their knowledge was just incredible", (3) focusing on holistic care: "they'd obviously built rapport with these people", and (4) showing genuine interest in educating students: "they got me involved".


CONCLUSIONS
Exposure to community settings was a positive learning experience for pre-registration nursing students. Further research needs to focus on the impact of these placements on both clinical skills acquisition and job choices into the future.
Kath
K
Peters
Susan
S
McInnes
Elizabeth
E
Halcomb
D000328:Adult; D001315:Australia; D002982:Clinical Clerkship; D003152:Community Health Nursing / Q000193:education* / Q000458:organization & administration*; D004508:Education, Nursing, Baccalaureate / Q000458:organization & administration*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008297:Male; D015402:Nursing Education Research; D059017:Primary Care Nursing / Q000523:psychology*; D036301:Qualitative Research; D013338:Students, Nursing / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult