There have been some developments in the management of Practice Learning Placements recently to enhance the student experience.

• 2017/18 academic year practice placement planning is commencing, with Mental Health, Child and Midwifery with the placement leads for checking and authorising.
• Adult nursing is planned for Monday 5^th June in conjunction with the 2 placement leads and myself to plan the full academic year and the full programme year for the cohorts to enhance the strength of the profiles and hopefully minimise changes made prior to placements starting.
• Work done on the Release of Placements to students is now complete. This enables me to plan placements in a draft environment and then once all the checks by placements leads and trusts are done we can make the allocation live to the students a minimum 6 weeks prior to the placement starting. Hopefully again we can minimise last minute changes with this tool.
• New starters March 17 will be informed of their confirmed placements this week now that all they have been authorised.

In addition, I delivered a short session with the new starters in September 2016, to show them how to use E:Vision and view their placements, placement contact details and absence reports. This has been well received and commenced also with March 17, students will now have the independence to manage their attendance with an at a glance view of their live absence reports so that they are aware of any hours that needs to be made up prior to them mounting up. This will continue with all new cohorts now for all students.

Sam Davies, Placements Administrative Co-Ordinator, S.C.Davies@staffs.ac.uk