References

London Medicine and Healthcare. Understanding students' experiences of undergraduate medical clinical placements in London: a more detailed and nuanced exploration of London students' perspectives on education in placements developed through interviews. 2017. https://bit.ly/2In540a (accessed 16 April 2019)

Tremayne P, Hunt L. Has anyone seen the student? Creating a welcoming practice environment for students. Br J Nurs.. 2019; 28:(6)369-373 https://doi.org/10.12968/bjon.2019.28.6.369

Fostering a welcoming environment: a medical student perspective

25 April 2019
Volume 28 · Issue 8

Dear Editor, With great interest we read the article by Tremayne and Hunt (2019) drawing attention to the impact of ensuring a welcoming environment on nursing students in a clinical setting. The authors alluded to how a sense of ‘lack of belonging’ can create hesitancy to engage with the team, which is particularly fascinating and also resonates among medical students. As medical students ourselves, we would like to offer our perspective on how different environments in clinical placements shape our experience. In particular, we would like to shed light on how discrepancies between clinical placements can significantly shape views on which future field of practice to enter.

We would first like to thank Tremayne and Hunt for identifying and exploring the impact of challenging clinical environments on students—a topic that resonates throughout medical school. Among medical students, opinions about the satisfaction of a clinical experience are largely based on two factors: the quality of the teaching provided and the attitudes of the staff towards students' presence. Although the importance of the former is acknowledged by medical schools and somewhat standardised across clinical attachments, the latter is often overlooked.

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