Prehospital Emergency Nursing students' experiences of learning during prehospital clinical placements

Clinical placements play an important role in learning a new profession, but students report about poor placement experiences. Standards have been laid down for improvements within clinical training in Prehospital Emergency Nursing programmes in Sweden, but no studies have been carried out in this field in a Swedish context. The purpose of this study was thus to describe the experiences of Prehospital Emergency Nursing (PEN) students of their clinical placement and the effect on their learning process. Data were collected in 28 individual interviews and analyzed in accordance with Flanagan's Critical Incident Technique. Three main areas emerged: the professional clinical supervisor, the clinical placement setting and the learning strategy. All these areas played a significant role in the PEN students' learning progress and development into a new professional role. The choice of clinical supervisor (CS) and clinical placement is important if PEN students' learning is to be an effective and positive experience. The prehospital environment is unique and can have positive and negative effects on student learning depending on the support and structure given during their clinical placement. A learning strategy based on reflective dialogue, CS continuity and a learning structure based on the prehospital environment is presented. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.