AHP students in public health settings - Toolkit 3: education

Back to Supporting the Development of Placements for Allied Health Professional Students in Public Health Settings 

Toolkit 3: Education providers

This toolkit is aimed at education providers and includes the following sections and accompanying checklists, templates and ideas to help support and guide your outcomes. 

• Finding public health placements
• Setting up public health placements
• Learning areas
• Establishing what the students will do
• Supporting and supervising students
• Assessing students

Download Toolkit 3: Education providers

Top tips for organisers of placements/education institutions from the case study authors

• Universities should help to immerse the student in the public health agenda and show them how it is relevant to their practice.
• Universities should have public health and population health embedded throughout the academic curriculum in preparation for every practice placement to shift practice and approaches to prevention, where possible.
• Create different ways of learning and provide learning opportunities to help embed population health.
• Open up students’ understanding that the populations they are working with will be the experts about their experiences.
• Take a look at public venues and see what signs and posters they have that are advertising community events. It helps to consider how students might get involved in community events or what could be made available alongside these events.  
• Approach library networks, managers or public health representatives to start conversations early as things take time.
• Get community champions or other local organisations involved in ideas for projects where possible.
• Creating a good relationship with the services and the people you want to work with is key. You need to bring something to this relationship that is a benefit to the organisation and invest it in.
• Provide clear, marketing materials to show what the organisation will gain from supporting a student, details of what you require of them including any dates for events and a commitment to doing this.
• Do not underestimate how much coordination it takes to arrange placements and designate work time for this.
• Get agreements in place for things like public liability insurance; we encourage students to become members of their professional body which also covers this.
• Tariff money (where and if available) can be a small incentive for paying the on-site supervisors and the long arm mentors.
• Send the students out in pairs for peer support where possible (although this is not always practical for very small organisations if their operational practices wouldn’t allow both students to lead activities to fulfil their required hours before a given deadline).
• Consider different levels of support to be put in place for the students.
• Celebrate the achievements at the end.