Was anyone's DC due to do a hospital placement next term? If so what will happen?

[CompleteBarstool]

DD is in her first year of a degree physio and was due to do a hospital placement for the whole of next term. Obviously that's looking unlikely/impossible but at the moment they don't know what is happening instead

I just wondered if anyone's DC is in a similar position (medicine, nursing, paramedic etc) and if they know what's going to happen.

My DD is training to be an SLT. HCPC have put some advice out about degree courses in the last couple of days. I think first years are to carry on (although placements are tricky) but second/third years are encouraged to take assistant jobs in the NHS for something like half of their time, and continue to study online with their university for the rest. I can't see the advice online but I'll link if I can find it.

To be honest, I think it will take a bit of time to work it all out and universities are struggling to get courses online, meet university regulations, and adjust courses to meet guidelines from professional bodies all at once.

Thank you Tranquility.

You're right about all the regulations they've got to meet, for example DD has to do a minimum amount of hours in placement over the 3 years to meet CSP requirements.

It's not going to be an overnight job to bring forward lectures from Year 2 Term 1 and teach those instead of placement either.

I'm seriously wondering if they'll have to add on an extra term at the end of the 3 years to catch up with lost hours??

This is the statement HCPC have put out:

www.hcpc-uk.org/news-and-events/news/2020/joint-statement-on-how-we-will-support-and-enable-the-student-allied-health-professional-workforce-to-respond-to-the-covid-19/

It looks as if they're recommending that courses are restructured for first years so that they concentrate on academic study in the short term.

I work in a community trust and we've cancelled April placements for final year physio but the uni is still hoping we can take the May ones.

All other years placements have been cancelled for the foreseeable.

I guess we'll see how things pan out. Currently we're not doing routine therapy and working as a generic community worker, we couldn't give them the learning experience we need. We're also concerned about depletion of our PPE stocks for extra people.

Thanks for that.

It's like I said in my last post though, it's not going to be straightforward to suddenly implement online academic work.

There's also the knock on effect that Unis will have 3 years of students to put in placements but there are only so many terms, placements and uni staff to oversee them available.

A logistical nightmare!

Good point about the PPE pantsforhats (good name BTW, made me smile )

My sister is a 1st year nursing student and she’s been told they will just need to do the additional placement next year (will probably knock a week off the other placements to accommodate). She is still sorting exams this year though.

Yes DD's exams are still going ahead although the practical one had to be done differently of course.

I guess if the extra weeks are tagged onto other placements they'll have to expect shorter holidays

My d is a first year medical student in London. They were due to have a two week hospital placement in May but have had an email all placements are cancelled for all year groups for the rest of the academic year.

DS is a third year, ie first clinical year, medical student. They were sent home quite abruptly a few weeks ago. Their course is being rewritten and a non placement, syllabus announced next week.

Luckier than the fifth year whose qualifications were expedited so they could be put straight on wards.

Dd is 4th year medic. The placements they were on were curtailed abruptly a few weeks ago and the ones due to start after Easter have been cancelled as have the June exams. The latest she has heard is that (all going well) they will have to return in mid July to do the placement they have missed and probably do the end of 4th year exams in September. I think the exam issue is unique to 4th years - initially they were told that the end of final year exams would cover the 2 years but apparently this is not possible under the GMC regulations to ensure fitness to practice

DD’s uni have a safety net policy for all courses saying that providing the pass Mark is achieved students won’t get a lower mark than their year average, but have said that this doesn’t apply to medics due to the GMC regs, that they will have online exams and their marks will stand - so it’s not just a fourth year thing x But she’s heard (group chat with sixth form friends) that some unis have cancelled exams for first year med students so it still seems unclear 🤷‍♀️ She’s doing 2-3 hours exam prep each morning anyway, it’s good to have some structure to the day at the moment.

The "no detriment policy" won't apply in the same way to a lot of courses that have involvement with professional bodies who insist on certain criteria.

Dd has had another email from uni today saying the elective they should have been doing in July/August still needs to be done but earlier. This is a bit ludicrous as clinical settings wont want them right now. Many of her classmates had had electives arranged for months, some abroad, which obviously had to be cancelled.

There is no way we can have AHP students for quite some time. Vast amounts of AHPs have been redeployed for months into other roles as services have been stood down and normal NHS business won't resume until the vast proportion of covid is over with. That might not be for 6 months or more (according to our managers anyway!). No sure what should be done about it all though.