Kaylenne Byrne

Clinical placements allow students the opportunity to apply theoretical knowledge and become workforce ready. Demand for clinical placements from education providers already exceeds supply. As healthcare workforce shortages continue, the need for increasing numbers of graduates will generate additional strain, and policymakers targeting health workforce shortages must be cognisant of their impact on the education and health sectors. At the same time, clinical placements must be fit for purpose and meet the learning needs of students. The diverse array of placement models has been compounded by rapid developments during the COVID-19 pandemic. Challenges and considerations include labour intensity, need for capacity building, importance of engagement at institutional and local supervisor levels, cost (including that to students), planetary impact, availability and equity. The future of high-quality clinical placements needs to be secured and built on a sustainable framework to support future clinical placement capacity.

The Academic Student Success Advising (ASSA) project enacted an integrated academic and pastoral approach to advising using McIntosh’s (2023) fundamental principles of advising. This research conducted at two Australian universities explores how shared principles of advising can provide an underpinning structure to pan-university advising approaches as a mechanism of student development. Forty staff were interviewed, exploring understandings and experiences of advising. Data were analysed through the four key advising themes: inclusive, personalised and integrated, developmental, and student-centred. The findings suggest that staff perceive value in integrated advising approaches that connect students’ academic and pastoral experiences through an ‘advising as teaching lens’ and that link areas of the university to enhance student success. Recommendations highlight the value of investing in staff understandings of advising to enhance student development, the intentional embedding of co-curricular skills, and the continued need to develop systems to track advising outcomes.