Nurse Education in Practice 10 (2010) e43

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Nurse Education in Practice

journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/nepr

Book Review

The Clinical Placement – A Nursing Survival Guide, Levett-Jones,T., Bourgeois, S., second ed., Elsevier, Bailleire Tindall, 2009. ISBN:978-0-7020-2970-7

This is a handy sized book designed to provide guidance fornursing students during the practice component of their nursingeducation. Written by two nurses with broad management andeducational backgrounds, the book is laid out in six chapters, as de-tailed below.

The first chapter, entitled ‘rules of engagement’ discusses thecultural environment and its constituents that make up clinicalpractice. It provides the reader with some useful references for fur-ther reading and gives a reasonably thorough review of nursingand being a nurse. However, the difficulties of providing a trulycomprehensive text become apparent, as by attempting to coverall possible practice environments some of their advice seemsunfocussed and not explicit enough to provide practical advicefor newer nursing students. Also, the section describing commonmembers of the multidisciplinary team appears to have some obvi-ous omissions such as physiotherapists and dieticians. Both ofwhom may have much wider roles than nursing students realisetherefore their inclusion would have been very useful. Chaptertwo provides a good overview of the role of the nursing studentand describes ‘coaching tips’ to avoid any potentially difficult situ-ations that may arise.

The following chapter discusses how a nursing student shouldact. The majority of the chapter is informative and empowering,and strengthens the role of the student nurse by providing soundpractical advice. The sections on workplace bullying and acceptinggifts from patients is particularly informative. The start of thechapter is less appealing as it presents as somewhat patronising.

doi:10.1016/j.nepr.2009.10.001

It suggests appropriate student behaviour to include respectful-ness, willingness to help and working cooperatively. Chapter fourprovides a detailed explanation of the process, importance andbenefits of reflection in practice. Chapter five outlines the commu-nication process and explains how nursing student can improvetheir written and verbal communication skills, again providingcoaching tips that newer students may find useful. The final chap-ter is written by several specialist guest writers, each providing asummary of their practice areas and what student nurses mayhope to achieve if allocated their speciality as one of their clinicalplacements. It provides the reader with further reading sugges-tions that should be undertaken prior to commencement of theplacement and neat summaries of ‘what to expect’. This sectionwas enjoyable to read and covered some specialties of nursing thattend to be forgotten in other general nursing texts, such as privatehospital and forensic mental health nursing.

Overall this book was easily accessible and easy to navigate.Despite some curious inclusions and omissions that were dis-cussed earlier, it was a thorough text providing the student nursewith everything they would need to know prior to commencingclinical practice. However, it may be more suitable for nursingstudents in the early years of their study and may not necessarilybe an essential text that would be referred to beyond the earlystages.

Daniel GillStudent Nurse,

University of Salford,School of Nursing,

United KingdomE-mail address: danielgill87@hotmail.co.uk