Deciding to offer a clinical education placement

When deciding whether to offer a clinical education placement, you need to consider your:

motivations for offering the placement – the benefits to you, the students, your workplace;
ability to facilitate student learning – the appropriate clinical and interpersonal skills, enthusiasm for your work and for clinical education, workload, organisation and time management and adequate understanding of the role of clinical educator; and
capacity to provide a suitable environment and caseload for student learning, appropriate space and enough available time.

In this section, there is information to help you decide whether to take a student for the first time; information about the benefits and challenges of offering placements; the features of high quality placements; and the characteristics you will need to be an effective clinical educator.

You will then need to decide how best to structure and prepare for the placement to ensure an effective learning experience.