BACKGROUND
Student led clinics can provide students from allied health professions with the opportunity to gain valuable placement experience as an integral component of their pre-registration programme enabling them to develop their competencies and professional skills and also their administrative and leadership skills. Student led clinics have the capacity to help meet the demand for appropriate practice based learning opportunities as there is an expectation that all allied health professions students should have high quality practice based learning experiences to ensure the workforce is fit for the future. Developing an overview of the studies relating to student led clinics will help to provide insight and understanding in relation to the key characteristics of student led clinics.
OBJECTIVE
The objective is to understand the extent and type of evidence in relation to the characteristics of student led clinics. This scoping review will identify the following: (1) What student-led clinics exist in the allied health professions and (2) what are their characteristics?
METHODS
The scoping review will consider studies and publications that include student led clinics as an integral part of the pre-registration curriculum for allied health professions students such as occupational therapy and physiotherapy. Databases to be searched are PubMed, MEDLINE, CINAHL, ERIC, Science Direct, PsycArticles, PsycINFO, TRIP database, and ProQuest Nursing and Allied Health Database, ProQuest One Academic, The Cochrane Library and JBI EBP database. The search strategy, including all the identified keywords and index terms, will be modified for each included database and/or information source. The reference lists of all the included evidence sources will be screened for any relevant additional studies. Potentially relevant sources will be retrieved and imported into the Covidence screening and data extraction tool. Studies published in English will be included and date limiters will not be used.
RESULTS
Data will be extracted from the studies and charted using the TIDieR checklist and this will be conducted in line with the objectives of the scoping review.
CONCLUSIONS
This scoping will provide key information about the characteristics of student led clinics such as such as type and location, duration, aims, type of allied health students, and development activities of the student led clinic. The findings of the scoping review will be of interest to pre-registration education programmes within the allied health professions who have an interest in exploring opportunities to address placement capacity issues.
CLINICALTRIAL
Open Science Framework DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/RGAQX; https://osf.io/rgaqx/