Supervisors' experiences of workplace supervision of nursing and paramedic students in rural settings: a scoping review

Abstract

Objectives: We present our findings from a scoping review that sought to identify what is known about nursing and paramedic clinical supervisors' experiences of their supervision practices in rural settings. Our interest in these two groups is based on the central role that nurses and paramedics play in rural health care.

Design: Scoping reviews support identification of a broad range of literature, including all types of study designs. We adopted Arksey and O'Malley's five-stage approach: identifying the research question; identifying relevant studies; study selection; charting the data; and collating, summarising and reporting results.

Data sources: Databases searched included Academic Search Complete, Springer, Factiva, ProQuest, Ebsco, Informit, VOCEDplus and Scopus.

Review method: Based on our research question and inclusion and exclusion criteria we selected relevant literature and summarised and reported it using Arksey and O'Malley's framework.

Results: The review yielded five articles from four countries: Sweden, Belgium, Malaysia and Australia.

Conclusion: From this scoping review, we identified key themes related to supervisors' experiences, including clarification of expectations, support from managers and colleagues, the need for shared understanding between university, students and supervisors and required skills and competence in supervising students.

Keywords: Nursing; Paramedicine; Rural; Supervision; Supervisor.