Placement advice

Hi everyone, I'm a student mental health nurse and I'm currently on placement. It's more of social prescribing placement, mostly I am enjoying it (only 2 weeks in) but it feels like certain days they just don't know what to do with the students and they are sending us to community groups where we feel like we are not learning as there are no learning opportunities available there.

I'm unsure as to whether I should bring this up with the assessor and express these concerns or would this come across as ungrateful? I am a first year student and I'm still finding my feet on the course and I'm not really sure what is expected of students.

But I do feel strongly about the fact that we are paying for this education and working for free on placements we should have more say during placement time.

Anyway this was quite long and if you've reached the end, thanks for reading and please share some wisdom with me :smile:

Reply 1

Tracey_W

Original post by HIzabela

Hi everyone, I'm a student mental health nurse and I'm currently on placement. It's more of social prescribing placement, mostly I am enjoying it (only 2 weeks in) but it feels like certain days they just don't know what to do with the students and they are sending us to community groups where we feel like we are not learning as there are no learning opportunities available there.
I'm unsure as to whether I should bring this up with the assessor and express these concerns or would this come across as ungrateful? I am a first year student and I'm still finding my feet on the course and I'm not really sure what is expected of students.
But I do feel strongly about the fact that we are paying for this education and working for free on placements we should have more say during placement time.
Anyway this was quite long and if you've reached the end, thanks for reading and please share some wisdom with me :smile:

If you have any concerns about your course and the way you think you are being taught then you need to speak to your university course leader and placement officer about it and let them decide what happens next.

Your placement assessor is only your mentor teaching you what you are to do.

Unfortunately you won't get much say about what you do on placement as every is set in stone by the NMC, it's the way the university and hospitals teaches you is the only thing that is different.

You have a lot still to learn with only being a first year student nurse.
You'll probably find out when you do your next placement it will be far better than the current one you are doing as every placement is completely different from the previous one.

Every student nurse in the UK are in the same situation as yourself with having to pay for there degree in one way or another. The learn grant in England isn't enough for student nurses etc unlike other parts of the UK getting a far better nursing bursary from there own government as they don't have to take out big student loans compared to the likes of the English students. I put the blame on the Westminster government for this one.

A NHS registered midwife and mentor/ supervisor to upcoming student midwives.

Reply 2

Davenursing

Here's some suggestions:
Talk to your practice assessor, they'll have had students before. You can ask them how your can enrich your learning objectives. Take the opportunity to do some extra shadowing of other professionals.
get your medicines management signed off.
Talk to the service users find out as much as you can about their conditions and how it affects them.
Use the placement to build positive relationships with patients who might benefit from the interaction - ask the duty staff to nominate a patient that might give tou some extra insight.
Ask your pratice assessors and acdemic assessorts to listen out for interesting things going on.
Arrrange a day/afternoon shadowing a psychologist, therapist etc. - Get reflections from each one