Link lecturers' views on supporting student nurses who have a learning difficulty in clinical placement.

BACKGROUND

literature that reports the experiences of facilitating reasonable adjustments for student nurses who have a learning difficulty (LD) in clinical placement from the viewpoint of link lecturers is limited and warrants further exploration. Research aim: to explore link lecturers' views on reasonable adjustments in clinical placement and whether they are confident with their own knowledge of the processes involved.

METHODOLOGY: data were collected using interviews with three link lecturers from three fields of nursing (adult, child and mental health). Audio-recorded interviews were transcribed, coded and thematically analysed.

FINDINGS: three main themes were identified: student engagement, clarity of link lecturer role and external barriers.

CONCLUSION

findings demonstrate that link lecturers have some confidence with their own knowledge of the processes involved with supporting student nurses with an LD in clinical placement, but these processes are complex with many barriers preventing successful facilitation of available reasonable adjustments.