ISRRT_COVID-19_book

Clinical placement is a cornerstone in the development of competent healthcare
professionals. Radiography being a hands-on profession requires substantial actual clinical
experience which is often only achievable through patient interaction during clinical
placement. With prolonged suspension of clinical placement, there were growing concerns
over the impact of postponing clinical placement – delay in graduation of healthcare
professionals and the pipeline of healthcare professionals to support the increasing stretched
healthcare systems.
With this in mind, some countries made a deliberate and careful decision to resume clinical
placement amid the pandemic. This called for a coordinated response from the hospitals and
academic institutions. There was clear emphasis from all stakeholders for students to be
compliant with hospital safety measures. Beyond that, students had to be well prepared for
the upcoming clinical placement amid an unprecedented pandemic. Infection control and
contact tracing were strongly advocated and students were refreshed with the updated
infection control measures prior to their pre-clinical briefing 1 . This included donning and
doffing of personal protection equipment (PPE) and ensuring that the students were mask
fitted prior to their arrival at the clinical placement site. Similar to pre-clinical briefing, a
curated orientation programme was prepared for students at the clinical placement site. Sick
management was highlighted to the students and special considerations were made to the
students’ roster to facilitate cohorting and controlled movement.
In addition, clinical sites and academic institutions had reached a common consensus for
modification to the students’ clinical performance evaluation – removal of high-stake
summative assessments and reduction of formative competency assessment. These were
necessary in view of the workload changes and manpower deployment amid the pandemic –
reducing the burden on the educators and students. Other strategies that were proactively
adopted at the clinical sites included deploying of technological tools for teleconferencing and
the use of clear and frequent communications. In tandem, to maximise students’ learning
experience, learning contracts were used – developed in collaboration with educators to
encourage student-centric learning 1 . The well-being of students was also of utmost
importance and strategies were in place to safeguard their well-being while on placement.
There were regular check-ins during their placement and like all healthcare professionals,
138