Clinical placement supervision: why supervisors do it.

Introduction/Background: The continued professionalisation of Clinical Exercise Physiology has led to significant increases in the demands placed upon clinical placement supervisors. Yet little is known of the factors that influence practitioners to supervise placement. Purpose/Objectives: To understand the factors that may promote and conversely, restrict the supervision of Clinical Exercise Physiology students within Australia. Questions for exploration: How do we address these factors to ensure placement capacity? Results: Clinical Exercise Physiology placement supervisors from across Australia, participated in an anonymous online survey (n=129). Free-text responses about what factors promote (n=92) and what factors constrain/restrict (n=94) ability/willingness to supervise were collected. Qualitative thematic analysis resulted in 16 themes. The most commonly reported themes for promoting supervision were giving back to the Profession (n=28), service benefit (n=23) and student learning experience (n=23); while the most reported themes for constraints/restrictions were resources (staffing, time, workload) (n=40), University-based administration, support and organisation (n=26), and student attributes (n=21). Discussion: Students were perceived to provide service benefits to the supervising practice such as a helping hand, bringing new ideas and contemporary best practice to the facility. In contrast, additional staff workload and time commitment was the factor most frequently cited as restricting placement supervision. Administration and reporting, University organisation and student preparedness were constraints on willingness to undertake future supervision. Conclusions: Standardised processes to improve stakeholder preparedness and reporting efficiency should be developed in order to sustain placement supervision capacity.