Developing Measures of Placement Quality in Allied Health, Dentistry, Medicine, and Pharmacy

Abstract

As placement numbers expand, there is a concern that the quality of student experience and learning may diminish. Furthermore, there is a paucity of evidence for evaluation and quality improvement in clinical health placements and there have been few studies undertaken to assess quality. Valid and reliable measures of placement quality are needed to provide an evidence-base to guide decisions about the most efficient and effective placement models in health. A two-phase mixed methods design, using a modified Delphi process, focus groups, and surveys, developed and tested items to measure placement quality. Thematic analysis, descriptive statistics, and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) were used to analyse the data. Twenty-three participants took part in the Phase 1 stakeholder focus groups, and 150 useable surveys were returned by 161 who took part in Phase 2 to test validity and reliability of the student survey items. Results show broad agreement on the features of a quality clinical placement across allied health dentistry, medicine, and pharmacy professions. The student survey was found to be a valid and reliable measure of placement quality, with the EFA showing one component accounting for 58.5% of the variance in the survey data. The findings offer a framework and approach that others can adopt to measure placement quality in their setting. The measures may be adaptable to contexts outside health.

Investigation of the Validity and Reliability of a Placement Quality Survey for Measuring Rural Student Work Integrated Learning Placement Quality

“…Firstly, an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was conducted to duplicate the methods used in the McAllister article (McAllister et al, 2018) to assess the degree to which the seven items in the PQS sufficiently explained the underlying construct of rural clinical placements. The Bartlett's Test of Sphericity (SAS Institute, 2020) was used to determine whether the data were suitable for factor analyses.…”

“…The authors found broad agreement on the elements that measure the quality of clinical placements amongst dentistry, medicine and pharmacy students. The tool was valid and reliable with EFA showing one component accounting for 58.5% of the variance of survey data (McAllister et al, 2018).…”

“…Measuring the quality of these student placements is integral to continuous quality improvement, providing an evidence-base to guide decisions about, for example, the most efficient and effective models of clinical education to invest in, preparing students prior to placement, and supervisor development programs. However, there have been few systematic efforts to assess quality of clinical placements (McAllister et al, 2010;McAllister et al, 2018;Nolte et al, 2011;Siggins Miller Consultants, 2012); rather, a range of factors related to quality has been identified (Cusick et al, 2014;Siggins Miller Consultants, 2012). For example, the Best Practice in Clinical Learning Environments (BPCLE) framework provides a model of practice for medicine, nursing and allied health clinical learning environments capturing features that support clinical placement experience (Darcy Associates, 2012).…”

“…They suggested that measures based on the BPCLE framework with the addition of measures of supervision might be an effective approach to developing quality measures (Cusick et al, 2014). To our knowledge, only one instrument which systematically and robustly measures quality in allied health has been developed and published (McAllister et al, 2018).…”

“…Unlike other measures, this suite of measures is multidisciplinary and accounts for different stakeholder perspectives to allow for a more holistic set of quality outcomes to be measured from placements. This suite includes measures that allow for feedback from each stakeholder, thus maximising opportunities for quality improvement of the student learning experience (McAllister et al, 2018). McAllister and colleagues undertook a modified Delphi process, focus groups and surveys to develop a tool to measure placement quality and used exploratory factor analyses (EFA) to validate the tool.…”