Date of Award
2025
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (College of Nursing)
Schools and Centres
Nursing and Midwifery
First Supervisor
Associate Professor Ainslie Robinson
Second Supervisor
Dr Benjamin Hay
Abstract
Nursing education programs play a significant role in preparing future nurses to care for the growing number of older people who will require health care. A key component of this preparation is the learning that nursing students acquire through clinical placement experience in a residential aged care facility. This clinical placement provides them with opportunities to experience caring for older adults. However, many students are reportedly reluctant to accept clinical placement in aged care and are ill-prepared for the challenges of the residential aged care facility environment. Hence, it is important for the development of future nursing programs and the delivery of nurse education, as well as for providing quality care to an ageing demographic, to understand and mitigate such shortfalls. A significant part of this mitigation may lie in understanding student perspectives.
Accordingly, this study aims to understand whether undertaking residential aged care facility clinical placement changed (positively or negatively) first-year nursing students’ attitudes and led to transformative practice among them following clinical placement in Western Australia during the period February 2021 and July 2021. To this end, this study employs a qualitative research approach with a comparative research design. Data were collected in two phases. Prior to nursing students’ residential aged care facility clinical placement, data were collected from them using an open-ended questionnaire. Following clinical placement, data were collected through one-on-one semi-structured interviews with these students, clinical practice team members and clinical facilitators.
The findings indicate that attitudes of all nursing students who participated in this study had changed positively after their clinical placement experience and that transformative practice occurred. Recommendations are suggested that may help education providers, clinical facilitators and residential aged care facility staff to improve future students’ clinical placement experiences and, importantly, prepare them to care for an ageing population.
Publication Details
Narayan, N. A. (2025). Nursing Students' Clinical Placement Experience in a Residential Aged Care Facility: A Comparative Study [Doctor of Philosophy (College of Nursing)]. The University of Notre Dame Australia. https://researchonline.nd.edu.au/theses/464