Insights from the pandemic: An autoethnography of nursing clinical placement teams

Background: Designated placement staff, including academics, professional clinical support teams and stakeholder clinical teams, are responsible for organising students’ clinical placements. Disciplines have reported sustained innovations in the way placement staff work following the pandemic. There are few published reports from nursing placement staff. Aim: Understand how challenges during the pandemic, may have led to disrupting the status quo for nursing placement staff. Design: Nine academic, professional and industry nursing placement staff reflected on their daily work practices and team culture post the pandemic disruptions. The reflections were analysed using a descriptive thematic approach. Results: Staff described “a double-edged sword” balancing fatigue from the dynamic situation increasing their workloads with wanting to seize opportunities to challenge the status quo. Three themes were identified. Conclusion: Clinical placement staff shared reflections are useful for identifying workplace initiatives that may enhance nursing and other disciplinary placement staff team culture and ways of working.