Supporting learning in practice in the EBL curriculum: pre-registration students’ access to learning resources in the placement setting

This paper explores access to learning resources for nursing students when on placement. It also examines, in parallel, the impact of the move to enquiry based learning has on learning resources use by nursing students. The increased time spent learning in the clinical setting means that a deeper understanding of the use of learning resources by nursing students is necessary. A questionnaire survey was completed by 247 nursing students at Northumbria University around their use of learning resources on placement. This corresponded with focus groups being run with University and NHS providers of learning resources to establish the impact of enquiry based learning. It was found that effective collaboration between different stakeholders was especially important. Nursing students are also becoming increasingly sophisticated in their use of electronic learning resources. The nature of support for effective learning resources use by nursing students whilst on placement in the NHS has also been identified as key. The work has shown that it is very difficult to establish the impact of enquiry based learning on learning resources, as there are so many other variables.