Undergraduate nurses share their placement experiences in rural and remote Australia

26 Aug 2024

CRANAplus is committed to working with its Members to explore and clarify their experiences, to help guide and inform CRANAplus activities and advocacy. This includes the emerging workforce – CRANAplus Undergraduate Student Members. In November 2023, Professional Services Officer Melanie Avion distributed a survey to all CRANAplus Undergraduate Nursing Student Members. Here are a few of the survey findings.

In late 2023, the CRANAplus Nurs­ing and Mid­wifery Round­table Mem­bers asked ques­tions about the place­ment expe­ri­ence of under­grad­u­ate nurs­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly but not only in rur­al and remote areas. Some of the ques­tions raised relat­ed to new grad­u­ates’ pre­pared­ness for work­ing in rur­al and, at times, remote areas.

Mem­bers not­ed that new grad­u­ates and ear­ly career nurs­es increas­ing­ly super­vise, teach, and assess under­grad­u­ate stu­dents in geo­graphi-cal­ly iso­lat­ed health ser­vices with lim­it­ed staff or pre­cep­tor sup­port while also work­ing to con­sol­i­date their clin­i­cal capability.

In response, CRANAplus sur­veyed our Under­grad­u­ate Nurs­ing Stu­dent Mem­bers, and an inter­est­ed stu­dent met with the CRANAplus Nurs­ing and Mid­wifery Round­table for a Q&A ses­sion to dis­cuss both prepa­ra­tion for place­ment and the stu­dent learn­ing expe­ri­ence when on place­ments in remote and rur­al areas.

The CRANAplus Under­grad­u­ate Nurs­ing Stu­dent Sur­vey was con­duct­ed in Novem­ber 2023. The sur­vey tar­get­ed the CRANAplus Nurs­ing and Mid­wifery Round­table Mem­bers’ con­cerns and con­sid­ered the stu­dents’ diverse per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al con­texts in rur­al and remote nurs­ing services.

Of 129 tar­get­ed mem­bers, 15 respond­ed. All but one had place­ments in MMM37.

While a small sam­ple of stu­dents’ respons­es were con­sis­tent, they con­firmed con­cerns regard­ing place­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties and sup­port, par­tic­u­lar­ly clin­i­cal super­vi­sion, col­lab­o­ra­tion and mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary team­work, prepa­ra­tion for cul­tur­al­ly safe prac­tice, and pro­fes­sion­al enculturation.

An anony­mous com­ment from one stu­dent demon­strates the chal­lenges fac­ing stu­dents and inex­pe­ri­enced super­vis­ing nurs­es in rur­al and remote placements.

I have been super­vised… by a grad­u­ate nurse who bare­ly spoke to me let alone taught me any­thing. Not their fault… no-one taught them how to do it. They are also hold­ing it togeth­er and want to look competent.”

The sur­vey results and direct feed­back from CRANAplus Under­grad­u­ate Stu­dent Mem­bers are active­ly inform­ing and shap­ing CRANAplus activ­i­ties, includ­ing CRANAplus Posi­tion State­ments devel­op­ments and updates, and advo­ca­cy for health pro­fes­sion­al stu­dents. CRANAplus is com­mit­ted to work­ing with our stu­dent Mem­bers to fur­ther explore and clar­i­fy their expe­ri­ences on place­ments in rur­al and remote areas.

If you would like to share your expe­ri­ences or be involved in advo­ca­cy oppor­tu­ni­ties, sub­mit an expres­sion of inter­est or talk to the CRANAplus staff at our upcom­ing free Remote Nurs­ing & Mid­wifery Expo in Mel­bourne this October.