Evaluation of a virtual practice placement: a model to increase student capacity

Aim: To describe the development and evaluation of a novel virtual practice placement.

Background: Health systems around the world face the challenge of recruiting and retaining sufficient nursing staff to provide high quality care. The need to train more nurses makes it hard to provide sufficient and varied high quality student placements to all students. This paper reports the result of one approach to the provision of a novel virtual placement for pre-registration student nurses.

Design: Online virtual placement evaluated by a questionnaire conducted after the placement.

Methods: A total of 195 students attended the virtual practice placement between 10th October 2022 and the 10th of March 2023. The survey consisted of eight questions, of which one invited a qualitative response.

Results: A total of 188 students completed the questionnaire and provided feedback. Of these 84 were adult nursing students, 67 child, 36 mental health and one learning disability student. The virtual placement required considerable resources to run, however was deemed a valuable by most students. When asked to rate the overall experience out of 5, the median scores were consistently high: adult (Mdn=5), child (Mdn=4), learning disability (Mdn=5) and mental health (Mdn=5) and mean values consistently high across fields: adult (M=4.73), child (M=5), learning disability (M=5) and mental health (M=4.67). Qualitatively, there were four main themes that emerged from the questionnaire responses: increased understanding of community healthcare and holistic approaches to care; developing interpersonal skills; a positive impact on their future career opportunities and the value of realistic case studies.

Conclusions: Virtual placements are a viable addition to traditional placements. However, they require careful planning and considerable resources including experienced and dedicated facilitators. Principles for the delivery of virtual placements were produced to replicate and share best practice.