Need for a uniform clinical placement quality cycle

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To investigate how quality control of clinical placements in the Netherlands is organised, which tools are available for this purpose, and what Dutch clinical placement students think about current clinical placement assessment.DESIGN: Document analysis, literature search and questionnaire.METHOD: In 2017, we asked all 8 medical schools to share their procedures and tools for assessing clinical placement quality with us. We searched various databases to find all published tools developed to measure clinical placement quality. In the same year, we also conducted a survey of 15 clinical placement students per school with questions about current and desired clinical placement assessment.RESULTS: All 8 schools sent detailed information about clinical placement quality assessment contents and procedures. All schools indicated that they are cyclically measuring each clinical placement's quality using evaluations by the clinical placement students. Each school uses its own questionnaire, none of these questionnaires have been validated. Literature search only found two tools specifically developed for assessing clinical placement quality, none of which have been validated for the Dutch language and situation. Clinical placement students feel that not enough noticeable improvement actions are being taken as a result of their evaluations. They preferred a short, uniform questionnaire with questions about clinical placement content, atmosphere and organisation.CONCLUSION: The quality cycle of clinical placements in the Netherlands could be improved with respect to uniformity and implementation of actions for improvement. There is a need for standardisation of the clinical placement quality cycle and for development of a validated Dutch measuring tool for this.</p