Practice nurses experiences of mentoring undergraduate nursing students in Australian general practice Elizabeth J. Halcomb ⁎, Kath Peters, Susan McInnes Family & Community Health Research Group (FaCH) & School of Nursing & Midwifery (SONM), College of Health and Science (CHS), University of Western Sydney, Sydney Australia summary article info Article history: Accepted 14 August 2011 Keywords: General practice Career Clinical placement Mentoring Nursing education Internationally, the delivery of health services has shifted from secondary to primary care, necessitating an expo- nential growth of the nursing workforce and expansion of the nursing role in general practice. This growth, and the subsequent need to develop this workforce, has created a need to expose undergraduate nurses to general practice nursing as a viable career option. Concurrently, universities are struggling to find sufficient clinical places for their undergraduate students to gain clinical experience. It is logical, therefore, to increase the number of undergraduate nursing student placements in general practice. Through qualitative research methods, this paper seeks to explore the experiences of practice nurses mentoring undergraduate students on clinical placements within the general practice setting. Findings are presented in the following three themes: (1) Promoting Practice Nursing: We really need to get students in, (2) Mentoring future co-workers: Patience and reassurance, and (3) Reciprocity in learning: It's a bit of a two way street, which show the benefits of such placements. Clinical placements in general practice settings can be mutually beneficial in terms of providing quality teaching and learning experiences for students. Conversely, the experience provides an impetus for practice nurses to maintain currency of their clinical skills and knowledge through mentoring student nurses. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction The move to University programmes for pre-registration nursing training in Australia has transformed nursing education over the past 20 years (Daly et al., 2010). Whilst student nurses once gained expertise in an apprenticeship type model, with regular clinical work interspersed with theoretical ‘blocks’, undergraduate nursing students now study on university campuses and have scheduled clin- ical exposure within their courses. This model presents a number of challenges to ensure that graduating students sufficiently integrate theory and practice to become competent beginning registered nurses (Edwards et al., 2004). Clinical placement provides an ideal opportunity to expose students to a range of clinical experiences (Edwards et al., 2004). This exposure serves to both stimulate the integration of theory and practice and allow preconceived ideas of various clinical areas to be challenged. Ad- ditionally, a positive clinical environment can not only promote learn- ing, but may also influence the career choice of nursing students (Fenush and Hupcey, 2008; Marsland and Hickey, 2003). To date, most undergraduate clinical placements are undertaken in the acute sector (Halcomb et al., 2005). This has significant advantages given the size of acute settings which allow a university employed facilitator to support groups of nursing students within the confines of a single establishment. Impacting the ability of universities to find sufficient clinical places for its students has been the Government mandate to increase undergraduate nurse numbers in an attempt to alleviate the growing shortage of nurses. Effectively this means that an increasing number of students are seeking placements within a fairly constant number of acute facilities. At the same time, an increasing retirement rate amongst nursing staff who have the expertise to supervise under- graduate students further reduces the ability of the practice setting to take on nursing students (Barnett et al., 2008). Exacerbating place- ment difficulties is the large casual workforce, shorter lengths of hos- pital stays and changes in models of health service delivery all of which generate competition for placement amongst academic institu- tions (Hall, 2006). This dwindling number of placement opportunities has prompted tertiary institutions to revise their models of clinical placement and explore alternative clinical experiences for students (Price, 2007). Correlating with the shift in health care delivery from primary to secondary care has been the exponential growth of practice nursing in Australia (Halcomb et al., 2008a). Whilst nurses in general practice have become the cornerstone of primary care in the UK and New Zeal- and (Halcomb et al., 2008a), in Australia, the specialty has only signifi- cantly developed since the Australian Governments' Nursing in General Practice Initiative was implemented in 2001 (Price, 2007). In contrast to the 2349 nurses reported to be employed in general practice in the 2003 Practice Nurse Workforce Survey (Australian Nurse Education Today 32 (2012) 524–528 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Building 7, Campbelltown Campus, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith NSW 2751, Australia. Tel.: +61 2 4620 3344; Fax: +61 2 46203199. E-mail addresses: e.halcomb@uws.edu.au (E.J. Halcomb), k.peters@uws.edu.au (K. Peters), s.mcinnes@uws.edu.au (S. McInnes). 0260-6917/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.nedt.2011.08.012 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Nurse Education Today journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/nedt