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. 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’’.