Perceived levels of stress and anxiety and their impact on performance of physiotherapy students during clinical placements.

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The main purpose of this study is to explore the levels of stress and anxiety perceived by physiotherapy students during the course of their clinical placements. Clinical placements are designed to challenge students’ learning and expose them to situations which they would not otherwise experience. The transition between university-based learning and clinical practice is challenging for many students. Developing competency in safe patient management in the clinical setting is demanding, with a noticeable gap between what is learnt in the classroom and implementing this in a clinical setting. Supervised clinical placements provide experiential learning where students gain concrete experience, and have opportunities for observation and reflection, formation of abstract concepts and practise of new skills. In our anecdotal experience, a high number of physiotherapy students report that clinical placements are a source of stress and anxiety. It is the amount of stress and an individual student’s capacity to manage it that can result in stress being either beneficial or detrimental to learning. It is currently unknown whether the perceived levels of stress and anxiety that physiotherapy students experience during clinical placement impacts on their learning, either positively or negatively, and what factors may contribute to this. The primary aim of this study is to measure the levels of stress and anxiety perceived by physiotherapy students at a number of time points across their clinical placements (acute care, rehabilitation and primary and ambulatory care) to determine if the students’ perceived levels of stress and anxiety change over the clinical placement. Secondary aims include whether any patterns emerge in the levels of stress and anxiety perceived by students and whether baseline measures of anxiety traits influence anxiety levels during clinical placements. It is anticipated that the study will provide insight into the levels of stress and anxiety perceived by physiotherapy students during their clinical placements. It is possible that patterns of perceived stress and anxiety may emerge during particular time points in the clinical placement which could be used to help inform future research and to guide time specific changes to the clinical placement framework (e.g. strategies for stress reduction, education around resilience) which in turn may enhance clinical placement experiences and optimise student learning