Student placement pipelines during Code Brown

The ongoing struggle to find suitable clinical placements for Allied Health students through the current Omicron/Code Brown surge has led the Department of Health to explore all possibilities for clinical placements.

This means the Department of Health has asked all health services to consider possibly changing the setting, timing, and/or supervision arrangements of clinical placements to help ensure they can continue through the current peak surge of COVID cases.

VAHPA has expressed concerns to the government about any changes that will place students or their supervisors at unnecessary risk of COVID exposure, or that may undermine the professional specificity of the students’ experience on placement. Placement is a core element of the majority of Allied Health university courses where students learn vital professional skills and develop their capacity as practitioners in a way that the classroom can’t replicate.

However, the stark reality is that due to the current COVID Peak status and the state-wide Code Brown situation, most Allied Health Professionals have very little capacity to provide professionally-relevant and specific supervised practice to Allied Health students. Workloads are too high, availability is too limited, and attention is being pulled in too many different directions for Allied Health Professionals to dedicate the necessary time and resources to clinical education.

Many Allied Health Professionals have been and are still being redeployed to roles not necessarily related to their discipline and it would not be appropriate for them to be supervising students in these settings. For example, many AHPs are currently working in COVID-19 testing or vaccination centres, which would not be relevant or practical for student AHPs to attend for clinical placement. Having adequate staff to safely supervise students was a big problem prior to the pandemic.

VAHPA has identified that many of the suggested student placement options in the Department of Health’s recent document are simply not appropriate or relevant for professional clinical placements, and we have called for this guidance to be revised.

With the Omicron surge, AHPs are struggling to provide suitable student supervision in many settings. There is no simple answer to the student placement dilemma while health services continue to be under significant pressure. Members have identified that having more clinical educators would definitely help. VAHPA has been calling on the state government for more clinical educator positions. More Grade 3 and 4 clinical educator positions would be a boost to AHP retention and help create opportunities for more supervisors to host students.

Remember, if you are responsible for supervising a student, then you need the time and resources to still complete your clinical workload safely. While student training and supervision is important for the ongoing workforce growth, workplace health and safety should never be compromised.