What constitutes a community placement?

When developing pre-registration adult nursing programmes, education providers in both educational institutions and clinical areas must decide what is a community nursing placement and how much time students should spend there. This article considers definitions of what constitutes "community" in terms of clinical placements for student nurses. It suggests what might realistically be termed community nursing and home nursing and explains how these can enrich student nurses' experiences. The practice requirements for other pre-registration nursing fields, such as child, mental health and learning disabilities, have not been considered here, although some of the discussion would be relevant to these areas.