Student Radiographers’ Perceptions of Clinical Placement: a Survey in Ghana - Abstract
Aim: To investigate final year undergraduate radiography students’ perceptions of clinical placements, in relation to the clinical learning environment (CLE) and their learning achievements.
Methods: A 19-item pre-coded questionnaire with five point Likert-scale responses was administered face-to-face to 24 of the 27 final year radiography students who undertook mandatory clinical placements. Purposive sampling method was used to recruit participants. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21.0 was used to process the descriptive statistics data for analyses.
Results: The clinical placement enhanced students’ skills in patient-centred care, interpersonal and clinical competence. Placement afforded students opportunity to put theoretical knowledge
acquired in the class- room into real practice. Students’ rated the assistance of practising radiographers as appropriate for achieving learning outcomes and satisfaction. Radiographers
gave adequate supervision and actively included students in clinical activities as team members. Also, there were adequate learning resources at placement sites. However, the students reported
that they received inadequate feedback on their clinical performances and seminars organized were not enough.
Conclusion: The students rated their clinical learning environment as positive and supportive, and achieved various clinical skills with satisfaction from clinical placements. Nevertheless, the
students’ articulated of been denied performance feedback by supervisors, of which the students were unhappy about.