Medical students' perceptions of role models on clinical placements.

BACKGROUND: Clinical placements have been reported as being challenging, demanding and rewarding for health professional students. For medical students, clinical placements are often their first interaction with other health professionals, who are often graduates. This study was designed to explore medical students' experiences of a clinical placement, in which their perceptions about role models from the same or other disciplines emerged.
METHODS: A total of three focus groups (n = 15) were conducted with medical students following the completion of their clinical placement rotation in palliative and rehabilitative settings.
FINDINGS: Role models and influential figures were key themes to emerge from the focus group data, reflecting an underlying tension between the practitioners that the students wanted to learn from and the practitioners who were actually willing, and available, to teach and model certain clinical skills. DISCUSSION: The extent to which doctors, nurses and allied health professionals were seen as role models became a central focus in exploring how the professional identity of students is influenced on clinical placement.