Social work placement in GP practices surveys

Full description

The overall aims of this NQPHN funded research were to develop a field education placement curriculum for social work student placements in GP clinics in North Queensland, to trial six social work student GP placements, evaluate these and develop a sustainability plan. The project was supported through regular meetings with a reference group.

Ethics approval for this study for data collection involving surveys, non-identifying student clinic records and reference group meetings was sought from the James Cook University Human Ethics committee and granted, approval number H8532.

A field education curriculum for social work placements in GP practices was developed in 2021/22 informed by a systematic literature review exploring social work practice in primary health settings (Zuchowski & McLennan, 2022), reference group insights and project worker discussions. After the student placements were completed, feedback was used to update and finalise the curriculum.

Data collection involved a survey sent to key stakeholders and an analysis of the de-identified record of the students work in the clinic key. They aim of the data collection was to review and evaluate the social work placements in the GP clinics. Survey questions sought feedback on the curriculum modules, the type of services provided by students, the types of patient engagement, the benefits and challenges of student placements in primary health care, noted patient outcomes, the contribution of the placement to social work student learning and field education, service provider relationships, the value of the placements, key stakeholder contributions to the placements, required supports and overall satisfaction levels. The Qualtrics survey link was sent to 29 key stakeholders in the student placement and project, including s students, task supervisors, field educators, GP’s, other health professionals, mentors and reference group members. Sixteen responses were received, which resulted in a 55% response rate.  A thematic analysis was applied to the qualitative data in the survey and reporting forms. The answers to the survey and comments on the reporting forms were entered into the software NVivo for coding. The data were analysed via a process of inductive, axial and selective coding (Alston and Bowles, 2018). The draft themes were presented to the reference group members to seek further insights and feedback, before finalisation. Quantitative data was derived from the survey and record forms were entered in an excel spreadsheet to produce descriptive graphs and tables (Alston and Bowles, 2018).

Software/equipment used to create/collect the data: Qualtric

This dataset consists of the quantitative data (All data 4 8 22.csv) and a report (First Survey report 14 6 2022) from the first survey, saved in MS Word and PDF formats. The data files are available via conditional access only. The survey questions are available for download below.