Accommodating and supporting students with disability in the context of nursing clinical placements: A collaborative action research.

AIM/

OBJECTIVE

To examine issues and challenges encountered by university and clinical milieus in addressing the needs of students with disability during their clinical placements; and to identify existing or potential accommodation and support measures to address the challenges encountered.

BACKGROUND

The influx of students with learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder [with or without hyperactivity], mental health disorders or on the autism spectrum has caused an increase in the number of students with disabilities of more than 900% in universities in the past decade. This increase is causing added pressures to both the academic services providing student assistance and the personnel responsible for these students' clinical placements. While several studies have focused on measures designed to accommodate students with disabilities during their theoretical courses, only a small number worldwide have focused on student accommodation and support in the context of clinical placements. In the current paper, strategies highlighted in these studies were grouped under three categories: prior, during and post clinical placements.

DESIGN

Collaborative action research conducted amidst three learning communities.

METHODS

The larger study included learning communities from three disciplines: education, social work and nursing. Three tools helped guide the discussions: 1) brainstorming and classification tool; 2) contribution and feasibility tool; and 3) carrousel tool. The current study focusses solely on the findings from the five meetings of the nursing learning community (n = 14 participants).

RESULTS

Six categories of challenges were documented: 1) Poor writing skills; 2) Difficulty adapting to clinical milieus; 3) Difficulty linking theory with practice and setting priorities; 4) Difficulty managing specific and situational needs; 5) Issues with interpersonal skills and overall attitude; and 6) Challenges pertaining to students' professional responsibility to disclose their condition. Several accommodation and support measures were identified for each set of challenges and were also grouped under three categories: prior, during and post clinical placements.

CONCLUSIONS

Our study revealed that the issues identified could in fact be faced by any students, albeit their impact and complexity increased considerably when dealing with students with disability. It brought to light that the implementation of some of the measures identified will require changes to the structure of nursing programs. It also highlighted the ever-growing complexity of the clinical instructor role and the fact that clinical instructors do not always feel adequately prepared to support students with disability.