Summary
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.
Aim
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.
Design
A qualitative design was employed in this study.
Participants
Nine pre-registration nursing students were recruited from a research intensive single
campus of an Australian university.
Methods
In-depth semi-structured interviews.
Findings
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”.
Conclusion
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.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: April 07, 2015
Accepted:
March 2,
2015
Received in revised form:
February 6,
2015
Received:
December 9,
2014
Identification
Copyright
© 2015 Published by Elsevier Inc.
