Supporting students in practice

This article reports a project aiming to assess the effectiveness of clinic al nurses employed in support roles for students in clinical practice in on e UK higher education institution and its linked NHS Trusts. Focus groups and telephone interviews were used to collect data from the cl inical support nurses themselves, senior nurse managers and pre- and post-r egistration students. Findings show that personal commitment to the role was high and that these support staff made a valuable contribution to up-to-date clinical input int o classroom teaching. Managers also valued the university-clinical link role fulfilled by these s taff. Students had mixed opinions, pre-registration students having had little ex posure to this kind of support and post-registration students often not reg arding clinical support as necessary because of their own existing clinical experience and expertise. For clinical support staff themselves, the role was a busy one and they oft en experienced conflict and role overload in balancing the education and cl inical sides of their work. Necessary improvements for functioning of the roles were identified, includ ing having regular meetings between university and NHS managers and support teachers for liaison purposes, joint appraisal, and formal support mechani sms for role occupants. The overall conclusion drawn is that the roles were successful in bridging the theory-practice gap for the University and NHS Trust managers, but less so for students, and that they did this at some personal cost for role hol ders.