How To Prepare For Your Final Management Placement

Alex, a newly qualified Children’s Nurse suggests helpful tips on how to make the most out of your final management placement covering organisation, confidence levels and getting to know your team.

How To Prepare For Your Final Management Placement

Hi guys, if you haven't seen my face before, my name is Alex.

I have just finished my studies doing children's nursing at Kings College London and I am now a newly qualified Children's Nurse.

Today's video is gonna be about how to prepare for your management placement.

What Is A Final Management Placement?

For those of you who don't know, your management placement is your final placement at the end of third year, which you then get signed off for, meaning that you are able to qualify as a Nurse.

So this is the same placement that you have to do across all fields of nursing.

It's 12 weeks long, it's your final placement to kind of consolidate everything, get everything signed off and basically prove that you are ready to be on the registrar and qualified.

So I'm just gonna break down a few of my tips as I recently finished my management placement at the end of July.

I've been through it, it's very fresh to me.

So kind of based on my own experiences and advice as someone that's been through it.

I thought I would talk about it for anyone who may be going through that this year or maybe in the future, for more junior nursing students or anyone who may be thinking to apply to nursing in the future.

Ask For Your Rota In Advance

The first thing I would say, this applies to any stage you're at in your course.

Any placement you are on, get your ‘off duty’ or your rota in advance.

So this could be by emailing the ward, calling the ward to ask for your rota.

Try and do this, depending on how far in advance you find out your placement area, try and get your rota as quickly as you can especially if you're somebody who may have dependents, like if you have children or people to look after.

If you have other jobs on the side and other commitments that you need to work around, try, and sort out your rota as far in advance so you can make any special requests and they'll be able to accommodate you with more ease.

And then obviously the more in advance you get your ‘off duty’, the more in advance you'll be able to kind of plan the rest of your life, plan studying, plan your social life or whatever else you do in your free time.

Making Sure Your Rota Fits The Hours Required

Also that helps you, particularly for your management placement, getting your rota allows you to maybe add more shifts, take away shifts depending on if you've got too many hours to make up or if you've got extra hours under your belt.

That kind of allows you to do that in advance as well so you're not missing out or overworking on the flip side.

Schedule Your Placement Interviews Early On

The second thing would be to when you start the placement, make sure you know what you need to get done in terms of your PAD (Practice Assessment Document), your skills, making sure you plan in a timely manner when to do your initial interview, your midpoint, and your final interviews.

When to do your weekly meetings cause that's something you have to do in your management placement.

You have to do a weekly meeting to basically discuss your progress or what you've been doing.

Cause sometimes you won't be able to do that every week but just making sure that's all documented so you're not missing out on anything.

Keeping Others Informed

Telling the relevant person like your assessor/supervisor, what you still need to do so you're not just throwing all this stuff on them last minute when they're busy themselves.

If you've got any outstanding skill, like what I used to do was put a star or a cross next to like my outstanding skills so that I could know what I had left to do, and it was kind of clearer to whoever was signing my PAD as well.

Making sure you know if you need to get some patient feedback or carer feedback.

If you need to do your meds management like knowing what you need to do and then telling the relevant person like your assessor, your supervisor, what you need to do so that they're aware as well so you're not kind of just throwing all this stuff on them last minute when they're busy themselves.

That's really important as well.

Just so you can organize yourself throughout the 12 weeks and try to organize and try to kind of make time for all the different things you need to get signed off because that is so important.

You don't want to be coming back after your placement and going back and having to find people to sign things for you, especially when you are finally done, and you want to just enjoy yourself and feel relieved that you are finished as a student.

Getting The Confidence Levels Right

So obviously be confident in what you're doing but don't overdo it.

So obviously you're in your final placement, you should be kind of practicing like you are a qualified Nurse, you're taking your own caseload, you're doing the majority of the things for your patients, obviously under supervision, doing the majority of like meds and stuff under supervision, all of that kind of thing.

You should be kind of taking the lead, though in that sense, you've got to show confidence, you've got to be able to explain what you're doing and show that you can organize yourself throughout the shift and like make sure you get everything done.

So obviously be confident in what you're doing but don't overdo it.

You still have to prove to people that you're confident.

Prove to people that you're ready to qualify.

Ask Questions

You don't have to be a really outgoing, extroverted person to be able to show this type of confidence, but just by taking, like using your initiative, being proactive, things like that are good qualities to have as a student anyway, but particularly towards the end of your course.

At the same time, it is still, even though you are about to qualify, it's still totally okay to ask questions, ask for help because you don't know everything.

You will never know everything.

Even if you've been qualified for 100 years, you will never know everything.

So make sure that you ask questions if you're unsure because it's all about teamwork at the end of the day.

You're not on your own, you're there, you're supported.

Ask questions, you're still learning.

Just because you're at the end of the course doesn't mean that it's the end of your learning opportunities.

Like there's so many more ways that you can grow.

So yeah, make sure you're utilizing all the help and expertise that you can get from any members of the team, if you're unsure about stuff.

Connect With Your Team

Get to know these people, interact with them, like try not to just keep yourself to yourself, make friends with other students.

And then speaking of team, you're there for 12 weeks.

12 weeks is three months, it's a long time.

You’re working along a team of people for a long time.

Get to know these people, interact with them, like try not to just keep yourself to yourself, make friends with other students.

You can support each other.

Integrate yourself within the team, within people with different roles within the team.

So not just the nurses, you can get to know like doctors, the domestic staff, the ward clerks, everything, like chat to everybody.

Such a nice way to kind of just get to know people, especially if that's somewhere you're going to work or you're staying in the same hospital, or you are even going to work on the ward that you're doing your management placement on.

Just get to know people and then you just kind of feel more comfortable and they feel more comfortable with you, and it becomes more of like a friendly environment.

It's not that kind of like nerve-wracking, hostile environment that you might feel at the start of a placement when you're new and stuff.

And with students as well, support each other.

You're all going through the same thing as a third year in your management placement, support first year, second year students, try and teach them things.

I felt like it was so useful to be able to like to teach more junior students’ things because it helped with my learning and just being able to answer their questions and stuff, I think is really nice.

Something I really am looking forward to now I'm newly qualified as being able to support other students in the future because I think it's so, so important that students are treated correctly and have as many learning opportunities as possible.

And the last thing I would say is just stay organized and enjoy yourself.

Enjoy It

You just have to be yourself and try your hardest and just prove that you are ready to qualify basically.

It's your final placement as a student.

Make the most of it.

Make the most of not being counted in the numbers.

Make the most of being able to see different things.

Having this opportunity and just really try your hardest.

It will be long; it will be tough.

You might still have Uni work to do at the same time, which could be quite stressful.

It'll be nerve-wracking because you'll be waiting on results and things like that.

But it will be absolutely fine.

You just have to be yourself and try your hardest and just prove that you are ready to qualify basically.

But yeah, that's about it really.

I hope that advice was useful for you guys.

So thank you for watching video and I'll see you my next one, bye.