Clinical educator preparation
There are some individual activities that a clinical educator may need to do prior to a placement:
- Attend clinical education training or complete or review other clinical education professional development;
- Reflect on your previous clinical educator experiences and think about your goals as a clinical educator during the placement;
- Try and clear any ‘backlog’ of work (e.g. administration tasks, report writing) to free up as much time as possible to spend with students while they are there;
- Review the university’s learning goals and expectations for the placement;
- Think about the learning experiences and opportunities you can offer that might address these goals and expectation. The Occupational Therapy Practice Education Collaborative - Queensland (2017) provides a 'Preparing for Placement' section that may assist clinical educators create orientation, learning objectives and environments conducive to learning.
- Consider whether there are projects or innovations that students might be able to do;
- Collate or update a resource folder of teaching and learning tools that you might like to implement during the placement; and
- Make sure you have a clear understanding of the student assessment requirements and process.
