M-Support: keeping in touch on placement in primary health care settings

Lecturer support for nursing students in clinical placements is essential to assist students in consolidating their clinical experience and making links between theory and practice. The primary health care context poses challenges different from those of secondary or tertiary clinical settings. To deal with these challenges in primary health care settings a project using eTXT and SMS (Short Message Service) was introduced. This provides M-Support for students via a lecturer's computer and students' mobile phones. M-Support was provided to motivate, support and communicate with these student nurses. To evaluate the project a mixed methodology using data from surveys, eTXT and mobile phone message history, and a lecturer's field notes were used. Findings demonstrated that the introduction of this innovation reduced barriers to timely and effective support that arise from the mobile nature of some primary health care nursing roles and the geographical dispersion of placements across the region. These findings suggest that M-Support is an acceptable, cost-effective form of support to motivate, encourage and communicate with nursing students in primary health care clinical placements.