Student Supervision on Clinical Placement

Clinical placements for physiotherapy students involves a mixture of ‘seeing’ and ‘doing’ physiotherapy interventions and to professional behaviours in a clinical context, and in a supervised and supportive environment.

Practice Educators aim to assess and identify each individual student’s supervision needs; anticipate and prepare students for challenging situations as appropriate and match student competency levels to direct and indirect clinical demands.

Students work with the practice educators to develop their clinical practice skills and professional behaviours, in keeping the Rules of Professional Conduct, CORU standards of Proficiency and the European Core Standards of Physiotherapy Practice.

Practice Educators have the ability to educate, monitor and mentor students by:

• Establishing and maintaining an effective working relationship with the student
• Presenting clear performance expectations initially and throughout the placement appropriate to level of practice
• Organising initial planned learning, goal setting and re-evaluating these objectives in collaboration with the student

Practice Educators facilitate effective clinical reasoning and documentation standards in students by guiding students to integrate theory, practice, therapeutic concepts and skills, and encouraging reflective practice.

Effective student supervision aims are to deliver service in line with professional standards of practice and in keeping with professional code of ethics to develop CORU standards of proficiency.