Preparation for practice learning experience

8 Preparation for practice learning experience



Julie McGarry



CHAPTER AIMS




• To enable students to prepare for their practice learning experience with older people


• To discuss the underpinning resources to facilitate effective learning experience in practice with older people


• To consider the learning opportunities and particular skills that students can develop while working with and caring for older people across a range of settings



Introduction


In this chapter we discuss how you can prepare for your practice learning experience working with and caring for older people. As a central theme of this book we have emphasised that many contemporary care environments and models of care delivery stress an integrated approach to care and service delivery for older people. This, alongside the changing demography in the UK, strongly suggests that you are most likely to work with and care for older people across almost all settings, both community and hospital based. With this in mind, we therefore focus foremost on the learning opportunities and particular skills and knowledge that you can develop through working with and caring for older people rather than explicitly focusing on a particular care environment. Moreover, older people do not form a homogeneous group and so, in all care encounters, it is important to respect the rights of older people as individuals, for example recognising and acknowledging issues such as sexuality and cultural diversity.


However, we are also mindful that there are some specialist services for older people and we discuss this element of practice learning later in this chapter by providing a reflective account from a practitioner colleague who works in a specialist intermediate mental health service for older people.


We begin this chapter by providing hints and guidance on how to prepare for your practice placement experience in order to maximise your learning potential and opportunities. We also consider the particular skills that you can develop while working with and caring for older people and provide some examples and make explicit links to learning opportunities with older people through consideration of personal and professional development and action plans.



Preparation for practice


Preparation for your practice placement is an essential part of your learning experience overall and it is a Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) requirement that 50% of your programme is based in clinical practice. You will hear your academic tutors and clinical mentors talk about having to complete 4600 hours between theory and practice hours, and the NMC (2010) now enables some of those hours of practice to take place in the clinical skills learning environment within the university setting.


Practice placements provide the opportunity for you to develop your nursing skills and competencies, and by this we mean both clinical skills such as handwashing and the broader care skills such as being able to communicate with colleagues, patients and their families. Practice placements also offer you the opportunity to explore and apply your theoretical knowledge in the practice context in order to enhance your ability to implement evidence-based practice.


During your placements you will work with a number of professionals across a range of settings and will develop a wide knowledge base and range of skills in preparation for your role as a qualified nurse. Given the increasing number of older people in society, it is not surprising that in many of these settings, if not all with a few exceptions, you will meet older patients, clients or carers. Even if you are undertaking a field-specific pathway in children and young people, you will still encounter older people who may be grandparents or carers for children in your care.


Generally, there are a number of key areas to consider in terms of preparation for practice across the whole of your nursing course and we list the key elements in detail below. Some of these principles are generic in nature and you may wish to consult other books in this series for specific preparation activities, such as preparation for a surgical or mental health placement.


At the beginning of your course, you may feel as though there are a lot of different documents to complete and you may feel unsure about expectations in terms of the way in which, for example, you develop your portfolio of learning evidence, your academic writing skills for assignments and how to undertake and manage directed study time. As you progress through your course, however, you will become more familiar with these aspects and many of the preparation activities will become second nature to you. Support will also be available for these activities in the school of nursing or health care in which you are undertaking your programme of study and also the wider university campus and resources.



Practical preparation steps to help you to learn in practice and maximise learning opportunities



Making contact with your allocated placement team


Wherever your placement is based, and once you have received your allocation details, it is really helpful – and courteous – to contact the area to introduce yourself. Wherever possible, visit the practice area before you start and introduce yourself to the staff. This is really beneficial if you are feeling nervous about starting a placement as often a visit beforehand will allay anxiety and help to make you feel more comfortable when you start.


In addition to making contact, either by phone or through a visit to your placement prior to starting, it is also really useful to undertake some background research and reading. For example, find out about the main features of the type of ward it is, the patient/client group you will likely meet and their health problems. Practice placements also provide orientation or welcome packs for students and these provide lots of information about the placement and potential learning opportunities and will help you during your induction period to the placement area. Some of you may have an introduction to what will become your main organisation for clinical experience. You will often hear this called a ‘base trust’, in relation to an NHS placement area, but students will be undertaking clinical placements in a range of different organisations during their course of study as required to meet their learning outcomes.


Where you are in your programme, for example just starting out, mid-point or approaching your final placement, will largely determine how you approach your experience in relation to a practice-focused action plan. We return to discuss action plans and personal development plans later in this chapter.


In addition to contacting the ward directly and/or accessing ward-based resources, there are a number of sources of information to help you prepare for your practice placement and we list some of these below. Your school may have a dedicated practice learning Website or Web space and many of the resources and support that we list or discuss will probably be available there.



image Activity


Log on to your own university learning resource centre (such as BlackBoard) and find your online learning material with regards to clinical skills or preparation for practice placements. (For example, see the University of Nottingham practice learning pages: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/nursing/practice-learning/index.aspx.)


Discuss this with your personal tutor and other students who may also be allocated to the same placement.



image Tip


Use the following as a checklist prior to starting your placement (Holland & Roxburgh 2012).









































































Item Yes No
Checked dates of placement    
Found out where it is    
Found out best way to get there    
What time to arrive    
What to take with me    
What to wear (see uniform options)    
Name of mentor and ward/unit/health centre manager/sister    
Logged onto the course learning resource centre (intranet/password needed) and checked for any messages from programme/module leader/personal tutor    
Found out information available on any practice learning links on the School Website    
Found out link teacher name for the placement    
Undertaken some initial reading about the kinds of patient problems I may come across and the possible care of the patients    
Obtained a personal file for using at home to make notes on various health problems, signs and symptoms, medications, surgical interventions, etc.    
If time, practise some skills relevant to placement in clinical skills lab with teacher agreement    
Refresh knowledge in any notes undertaken in lectures/seminars at university    
Obtain at least one book from library or other resource which is relevant to the clinical placement, e.g. nursing the surgical patient (Pudner 2010)    
Ensure plenty of time to get to placement on the first day    


image Tip


Make sure that you visit your placement whenever possible prior to commencing your actual clinical experience and obtain the name of your mentor and first week’s ‘off duty’ (hours of practice learning noted on the nursing duty rota – usually posted on the staff notice board) which may also be negotiated with your mentor when you get there.



Practice learning teams (PLTs) or link tutor teams


Many schools have teams or individual members of academic staff who ‘link’ with a particular clinical area. PLTs or link tutors have established relationships with particular areas of practice and will offer learning support to students while they are in practice in a number of ways. For example, a tutor may visit you in practice or will be available to support you if you have any problems or issues that cannot be resolved through contact with your mentor. Your link or PLT tutor may also be able to advise you on specific clinical issues within a particular area or specialty as tutors often link with practice areas that are similar to their own professional backgrounds.



Support in practice and the role of the practice team


When you are in practice, you will observe and work alongside members of the ward team and this will include working with other professionals. This will give you the opportunity to work with your mentors and learn from them but also with other members of the wider multidisciplinary ward team, learning about their roles and how teams work together. There will also be opportunities to observe and work with other health and social care professionals, and members of the multidisciplinary team outside of your main placement environment. For example, you will have the opportunity in many areas to arrange insight visits or what some of you may know as ‘spoke’ placements (with your main placement known as the ‘hub’) such as spending time observing the role of the intermediate care team in the care of an older person who is being discharged from a hospital setting to their own home or a care home. Another example could be that you are allocated to a placement where there is an older person with a terminal illness and as part of total patient care you would like to understand what the role of a palliative care team caring for an older person at home is and who is involved in the care of the patient. You may also spend a few days learning about the hospice environment.



image Activity


Find out from your mentor on arrival at your placement what type of ‘spoke’ or insight visits you can undertake as part of the learning experience, and whether there are any dedicated ‘placement learning pathways’ as defined by the NMC (2010) organised for students in that placement. (These are pathways which enable students to gain a variety of linked experiences following a particular patient or a pathway of care such as admitting a patient to a ward for surgery, taking them to the operating theatre, staying with them for their whole surgery then to the recovery ward and back to the main placement.)

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Mar 1, 2017 | Posted by in NURSING | Comments Off on Preparation for practice learning experience

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