Student learning while undertaking community based health assessments on vulnerable families: Knowledge development for future clinical practice

Teaching students of nursing about the broader population through community based placements with disadvantaged groups increases the student’s confidence in dealing with the variety of people they will encounter in the acute care setting. The psychosocial assessment of a patient is an extremely important part of nursing care but often under prioritised in preference to immediate physical care requirements. The application of developmental psychosocial theories to clinical practice, and assessment techniques, can be difficult to achieve in traditional acute care placements.

In the current BN curriculum community based experiences are provided in each year level to develop student’s understandings about the psychosocial aspects of people in their care. The placement of second year nursing students in a community based setting with vulnerable families had two main aims. Firstly, previous research by Parry and Grant 2015 found a lack of access to health services amongst homeless families leading to poor health in their children. Secondly, the homelessness service staff had limited knowledge and skills about child development, assessment, psychological and mental health issues. Consequently they were unable to identify homeless families health needs and potential issues requiring intervention.

The addition of nursing students on placement in the service was recognised as adding value while also contributing significantly to the students learning. The student nurses and homelessness staff were surveyed and interviewed about their knowledge, skills and perceptions of the value of community based placements. This paper reports on these findings and preliminary results indicate student’s recognition of the skills to be learned in a non-acute setting “are relevant and useful in traditional nursing roles”. The staff in the homelessness service espouse the enhancement provided by the expertise of the nursing students working with vulnerable populations. This research highlights the benefits as perceived by students on often undervalued community based placements.