South African Podiatry Students' Experiences of Their Clinical Learning Environment

The role and purpose of a clinical learning environment (CLE) is to help students become confident and independent practitioners. Exposure to clinical learning environments provides podiatry students with essential experiential learning opportunities and skills that are difficult to obtain elsewhere. Anecdotal evidence suggests that podiatry students encounter various obstacles in CLEs, although these obstacles have not been thoroughly described. This article, therefore, aims to understand and describe South African podiatry students' experiences of their clinical learning environment.

A qualitative research method was employed. A purposive sampling strategy was used to select undergraduate podiatry students from the University of Johannesburg to participate in a focus group discussion. Eight students took part in the focus group discussion, which was audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Data were analysed using Giorgi's qualitative thematic analysis.

Three main themes were identified: (i) Attitudes of supervising clinicians, (ii) Student confidence and (iii) Shortage of supervising clinicians.

Overall, the experiences of podiatry students in their clinical environment were negative. Understanding these obstacles may offer insight into the improvement of the clinical learning environment, and it may be possible to facilitate the development of competent and confident podiatrists.