SAVE THE DATE: Practice Placement Education Update

Save the Date: Friday September 20th 2024

We are holding another meeting for all Dietitian managers (and their practice educators) on Friday  September 20^th to discuss practice placement updates and to share information on placement ideas being tried and tested. There will be an opportunity for Dietitians to work within their CHO groupings to discuss placement opportunities and to make a plan for how we can support each other into the future.

The venue is the Richmond Hospital,Dublin 1. Email info@indi.ie to book your place.

It is hard to believe that it is almost a year since we published the Practice Placement Position paper.  As you know this document was developed by a group of managers, placement practice educators and the INDI in response to the current vacancy crisis and the pressures that we are all facing in the workplace. More Dietitians need to be graduating in Ireland each year to fill vacancies across the country and to build a sustainable workforce. This means that we must train more students. Our goal is to support dietitians so they feel that they can provide practice placements  for  students from any HEI. We want to optimise capacity so we can all reap the benefits of having diverse, confident and competent new graduates who can work across all settings.

As you may remember we ran a workshop in the Aisling hotel in February 2023 “Practice Placement – the way forward” for dietitian Managers/ in charge.  This allowed managers to come together to discuss how we can work together to increase student training capacity across the country. This was followed up by a webinar in April, for all dietitians. The feedback from both events was very positive and great ideas have been generated and shared as result.

Without doubt, there is much we can do to increase practice placement capacity. This has been demonstrated by those who shared with us the different approaches they have taken to sustain, and in comes cases increase, practice placement capacity despite current day challenges, such as staff shortages.  

We know that since last year’s meeting, many of you have been putting some of these ideas and approaches into practice. We have tried to capture this information in 4 sub-groups of the T&F group set up at the start of this year. Initially each group was HEI aligned and led by 1-2 Task group members. These subgroups gave dietitians from all settings and opportunity to discuss ways of working together to increase potential placement opportunities. As two of these subgroups were very large, more recently we have started to look at this potential placement capacity across CHO areas. Many of you will have contributed to this work to date. If not, we welcome your input as we continue to expand this exercise. This is important work to undertake as there no data on current practice placement in Ireland.

There were a number of positive outcomes from the work that we have done so far. 

Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (DFERIS) engagement

We reached out to directly to DFERIS to discuss the need to graduate more Dietitians in Ireland and to advocate for additional HEI resourcing for same. This engagement led to the commencement of discussions between the HEi representatives and DFERIS. In turn this led to a commitment from the undergraduate programme to offer 5 additional places in September 2023.. 

HSE National HSCP office engagement

We have been working with the HSE National HSCP Office to advocate for more supports, to explore different routes into  dietetics and to quantify the number of potential  placements available. 

It is the goal of the HSCP office to develop a national database on all practice placements for all HSCPs across the country. A HSCP Practice Placement Database Working group has been established for this purpose. Sinead Feehan is the T&F group representative on this group, which has opportunity to brief the HSCPO on the work happening across Dietetics and the approach taken to date.  As result, the HSCPO is now conducting a services of interviews with HSCP managers across the country to gain a better understanding of the barriers and enablers to increasing practice placements in all professions.

HEI Engagement 

We have met with the programme Directors from the 4 HEIs delivering Dietetic Programmes i.e. TCD & TUD, UCD, UCC and UL. The have been briefed on the approach being taken by this T&F to increase practice placement capacity and have invited representatives to join our sub groups. We have also advocated strongly on your behalf for common assessment forms to be developed and we understand that this work is in progress.

Advocacy

The T&F group continues to advocate for the supports that Dietitians require in order to provide a sustainable practice placement programme for students across the country, as outlined in our position paper launched last year. 

HSE funded Regional coordinator posts to ensure seamless integration of placements across all locations.

HSE funded Practice placement tutor posts to overcome current challenges and increasing numbers

Formal arrangements between HEIs, placement sites and the HSE e.g. MOUs

Review of the current requirement for 1000 hours of clinical placement and the structure and timing of placements

Supports for accommodation for the greater Dublin area

Reinstatement of training allowance

Coordinated partnership approach between the HEIs, the regulator, the HSE and the profession.

Common assessment processes and documentation across all HEIs

Administrative supports in departments, to ensure that clinical training resources are optimised

Adequate office accommodation and technology within training sites

While we continue to work together to implement these recommendations, we need input from all stakeholders, from the HEIs the HSE, the government departments and most importantly from dietitians and student dietitians.  Our position is that we should be coming together to overcome barriers to PPE and that all dietitians should be training students.

PLEASE JOIN US ON SEPTEMBER 20th.