Preparation for clinical placement starts as soon as students commence their course. All lectures and tutorials are geared towards preparing students for their role in practice.
As students head into the Spring term of their first year, we employ a blended learning approach to more specific placement preparation. This will include face to face briefings, a series of training videos for the Nursing Progress Log (NPL), presentations containing useful advice and guidance and drop in sessions for students to ask questions and go through anything they are unsure about.
Within the university’s Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), student veterinary nurses have a dedicated clinical placement resource which contains anything and everything placement. This includes guidance and supporting presentations on:
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At an initial placement briefing, students are provided with a Clinical Placement Preparation Checklist (see Documents) that they can then work through at their own pace using the clinical placement resources.
Students are also asked to complete sections one and two of the Student and Clinical Coach NPL Planning Tool (see Documents) ready for their first meeting with their clinical coach. This tool aims to provide information for the clinical coach such as the students previous experience, any barriers to learning and how the student learns best. This information can then be discussed with the clinical coach to develop a suitable training plan and NPL targets.
As part of our quality assurance processes, we will ask for practice feedback as to how ‘placement ready’ you found your student. Please do let us know if there is anything we can do to help improve the pre-clinical placement training and support for our students.
Prior to commencing their degree course, all students complete a ‘Fitness to Practise’ questionnaire which is designed so that the University can identify any reasonable adjustment requirements, and to ensure that all students entering onto one of our veterinary nursing degree courses will be able to meet the RCVS day one skills and competencies, required to qualify as a veterinary nurse.
This is reviewed periodically, and prior to going on clinical placement is one of these occasions.
Where a student has disclosed to us something that has the potential to impact on clinical placement, we will liaise with the student regarding any reasonable adjustments they may need and then advise the practice about this prior to the student commencing placement. At this time, we can also provide additional information and/or support for the practice if they would like this.
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