Supporting students in practice.

This article reports a project aiming to assess the effectiveness of clinical nurses employed in support roles for students in clinical practice in one UK higher education institution and its linked NHS Trusts. Focus groups and telephone interviews were used to collect data from the clinical support nurses themselves, senior nurse managers and pre- and post-registration students. Findings show that personal commitment to the role was high and that these support staff made a valuable contribution to up-to-date clinical input into classroom teaching. Managers also valued the university-clinical link role fulfilled by these staff. Students had mixed opinions, pre-registration students having had little exposure to this kind of support and post-registration students often not regarding clinical support as necessary because of their own existing clinical experience and expertise. For clinical support staff themselves, the role was a busy one and they often experienced conflict and role overload in balancing the education and clinical sides of their work. Necessary improvements for functioning of the roles were identified, including having regular meetings between university and NHS managers and support teachers for liaison purposes, joint appraisal, and formal support mechanisms for role occupants. The overall conclusion drawn is that the roles were successful in bridging the theory-practice gap for the University and NHS Trust managers, but less so for students, and that they did this at some personal cost for role holders.