Preparing for Placement

Preparing for placement

There’s something about preparing for placement isn’t there? Something that gets all the nerves jangling, whether it’s excitement or anxiety, or if you feel overly positive or negative about your upcoming role and you’re worried about how you come across to your new team. There’s plenty of hints and tips around on the internet but sometimes preparation can be just taking stock of the most simple things. Entering my third year of my AHP degree, I have found some different activities help me more so than others in readying myself for clinical practice.

Firstly, there’s a reflective and organisational portion of my preparation. Personally speaking, I feel more comfortable with a plan and knowing what I should be doing and when. It’s easy to neglect self-care whilst on placement, being so focused on achieving and completing the placement, so I write a timetable for myself where I can allocate study time but also social and fitness time, making sure I don’t neglect the things that are important to me. It also helps to restrict me from overworking, spending too long forcing out a reflection and risking burnout. I also make sure that pre-placement I contact friends and family to fill my weekend diary: in the worst case scenario where you really don’t enjoy your placement, at least there’s always something to look forward to at the weekend!

As we move from module to module at university, we are also constantly learning and changing. Prior to placement I write a SWOT analysis to take an internal look at myself and see what’s changed: what may have been a weakness before may not be relevant anymore, or maybe your previous placement revealed some hidden strengths you had not yet discovered.

Not to sound overly negative but everybody has weaknesses: but don’t be afraid to own them! If you are nervous or unconfident about something in particular I find it’s helpful to note this and actually talk to your educator. You might be better at hiding it than you think and so if they don’t know, they can’t help you… So talk to them! You might find you have certain preferences to your placement such as how you receive feedback: make a list and see if your educator can facilitate these preferences.

I also take a look at my previous performance assessment and look at what areas need further work, using them to set myself some loose objectives to keep track of throughout the placement. Sometimes these are more based around mindfulness, such as “Take 30 minutes for yourself daily” rather than being course orientated.

Finally, my other preparation is more practical: I pack my bag either the day before or several days before to make sure I definitely have all the things I might need to jump straight in to placement. I used so many pens on my last placement that this time I already had a shopping list in my head, as well as another notepad ready to take around the ward.

However, my most important bit of preparation is not placement related at all! I make sure in the weeks running up to placement I batch cook meals and freeze them, to make sure after a long day on placement followed by studying I can make sure I’m still eating well and staying healthy. Being a gym addict, I sometimes have meal replacement shakes (such as Huel) and found them to be really helpful on my last placement for getting calories and nutrients in quickly and reduce the time needed to prepare a lunch, though I appreciate this doesn’t suit everyone!

I also have a huge spring clean of my house (which is much less fun than cooking lots). I personally find myself easily distracted and avoid work by cleaning or looking for jobs to do in my house. Thankfully my housemates have become a bit more supportive of this throughout my degree! I definitely find it helps me to focus on my work during placement.

Hopefully other students might find this helpful and don’t worry – everyone prepares in different ways. To those who don’t worry about placement at all… I salute you!

Rae

@RaeLloydMassage