Risk Governance in Clinical Education for Healthcare Students: A Scoping Review

Clinical education is essential for the training and accreditation of healthcare students. It facilitates hands-on application and prepares students for their future roles in a dynamic and complex workforce. However, such clinical exposure comes with inherent risk, not least due to the delicate balance between patient safety and student learning. Understanding risk is particularly crucial now as we confront new technologies that will undoubtedly transform clinical education. This scoping review aims to map current practices of tertiary institutions in managing risks and incidents in healthcare students' clinical education.

This scoping review adhered to the Joanna Briggs Institute's methodology and was reported in accordance with PRISMA-ScR guidelines. The search strategy considered key terms of 'risk', 'clinical' and 'students' in MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL and grey literature. An inductive-deductive approach was used for thematic data analysis.

We included 21 studies, which addressed risks in patient safety, student safety and incident response. Twelve studies reported on existing local practices, whereas nine evaluated new interventions. Ten studies intervened at the student level with education programmes, and 11 intervened at the faculty level with protocols and policies. Included studies involved students from medicine, nursing, dentistry, physiotherapy and psychology, with one study involving multiple disciplines.

Risk governance in clinical education is an emerging field, with faculties at various stages of establishing a risk governance framework. Key requisites for risk governance are robust and streamlined processes for incident reporting, incident response and policy change. Further research is needed to understand the impact of centralised multidisciplinary governance.