Placements: Frequently asked questions

Yes, you must show your NHS ID to access this service. You will need to get an NHS ID card from the HR department of Gloucester Hospitals Trust. You are likely to need an appointment to do this.

You should be able to contact the HR department by calling the trust switchboard – 0300 422 2222 and asking for the HR department. There is also a subsidised park & ride scheme available with this service.

Unfortunately, we are not be able to swap placements. The process of allocating placements is very complex and takes into consideration a whole range of factors, including staffing at the placements, student location, placement capacity, NMC requirements among other factors.

There are many places where you can access help and advice, including:

– The placements team: HSCPlacements@glos.ac.uk
– Student Centre: studentcentres@glos.ac.uk
– your coach in practice (Nursing students) practicesupport@glos.ac.uk
– the welfare team – welfare@glos.ac.uk
– your personal tutor & your course lead.

If you are unsure who to ask for help, then please contact the placements team, and we will direct you to the most appropriate place.

No on-site parking is available at Cheltenham General or Gloucester Royal Hospital. There is some limited on-street parking, and a number of town centre car parks are available.

If you are eligible for LSF funding, you may be able to claim back parking costs; please email HSCPlacements@glos.ac.uk for more information.

Yes, you need to send a picture of the damaged uniform along with the sizing of the uniform required to uniform@glos.ac.uk. Please ensure that you include your student number and course in the email.

Yes, you can purchase uniform from our online shop.

If the uniform you wish to purchase isn’t displayed please email uniform@glos.ac.uk with the uniform you want to purchase, you will then be given details of how to buy uniform direct from the supplier at the university rate.

Please ensure that you include your student number and course in the email.

If your uniform no longer fits please contact uniform@glos.ac.uk and they will be able to assist you in purchasing new uniform. Please ensure that you include your student number and course in the email.

Please email uniform@glos.ac.uk with your student number and course and a replacement badge can be ordered.

If the uniform is unworn and still with the original tags and packaging, yes. Please email uniform@glos.ac.uk Please ensure that you include your student number, course, the current size of your uniform and the size you wish to swap it to in the email.

You are able to download this direct from your LSF account. Unfortunately, the university doesn’t have access to this form. If you are struggling to download the correct form, please contact the LSF directly.

The millage rate set by the LSF is currently 0.28p per mile.

Please send the scanned form along with any receipts in PDF format to hscplacements@glos.ac.uk the form then be checked through and sent to the LSF. You will receive an email once this has been done. If there are any changes to be made on the form you will be contacted.

Claims will be processed within 25 working days from the date of receipt and payments will then be made within 10 working days.

Please allow these timescales to lapse before contacting the Learning Support Fund. We do advise that students check their accounts regularly for any updates regarding claims. 

If a payment has not been added to your account within 25 working days, we ask that you contact the Leaning Support Fund using the relevant links below:   

NHS LSF queries: Contact us | NHSBSA 

NHS Bursary queries: Students – Contact us | NHSBSA

If you need further help to fill in the form, please contact hscplacements@glos.ac.uk with your student number and course and help can be arranged.

An HCA is a valuable member of the nursing team and can provide a range of learning opportunities in delivering core nursing skills to student nurses.

One option is to ask the student why they are feeling like this and explore thoughts, feelings, experiences, and expectations with the student nurse.

Ensuring that the learning is aligned to the practice-based module learning outcomes they are undertaking.

There is a range of support available to students to access. This can be from a Student Centre, personal tutors, CIPs, money advice Health and wellbeing pages on My Glos, PEFs or equivalent.

Any disabilities and additional learning needs will need to be discussed with the Placement Lead for an Occupational Health assessment. An access plan may be put into place following the OH report. An Access plan is a guide to help you to support your student in practice and to be aware of any additional learning needs they may have. The student is responsible for the Access Plan and sharing of this information.

tudents are advised through the Placement Agreement, that whilst they can discuss their shift preferences with you, there is no requirement for placements to offer set days. All placement areas are supported by the Practice Support Team who would be able to help guide you in this situation. The Practice support team can be emailed via practicesupport@glos.ac.uk

Placement capacity is provided to us by trust education leads. If you feel that your ward or area has been allocated too many students, please contact your trust education team in the first instance.

Explore the issues around the difficulties the student is facing – are they related to the placement? Does the assessment need to be undertaken at that time, or could it be planned for a later date? Contact the CIP or University for further support for the student.

The first point is to contact the student whos details will be available on ARC, or continue to contact Practice Support, who will be able to raise this with the Academic Course Lead.

If you have concerns about your student, please contact the Practice Support team for further advice and support.

A Coach in Practice or CIP provides support for students whilst in placement, advice, and guidance for Practice Assessors. CIPs are not involved in the signing off of practice documents in place of a Practice Assessor. They do not allocate placements; this is done by the placement team’s Quality & Allocation Managers.

Yes, you are required to work night shifts in all placements. You need to work two night shifts in each placement. If your placement does not work night shifts, you do not need to make them up on another placement.

Unfortunately no. You are required to work the off-duty that is assigned to you by the ward or placement area. You are very welcome to discuss your personal situation with the placement, and in most cases, they will do their best to accommodate you, but the availability of staff and other operational considerations may mean that they are not able to accommodate specific shift requests.

Yes, you are expected to work weekend shifts if they are available in your placement. If there are no weekend shifts, if, for example, you are in a GP Practice, you are not required to make them up at another time. You should expect to work approximately 1 in 4 weekends, although some placement areas e.g. DCC will work more due to their shift patterns.

Unfortunately, no, you are required by the NMC to work a range of shifts in each placement. This will include early and late shifts as well as nights and weekends.

Yes, you must write a reflection for every shift worked.

You must not include any time spent writing reflections in your placement hours, as this would result in the hours being counted twice. You can complete the reflection on the placement if you wish to, but this must be after you have completed the full shift. You cannot be released from shift early to complete your reflections.

No, you only need to write reflections for shifts actually worked. You will not receive any placement time for reflections written when you are absent from placement.

You will need to submit all reflections to your course team. The placements team do not mark or review any reflections.

Yes – the NMC may ask you to provide evidence of your placement hours when you apply for your PIN. In this situation, we will provide you with a placement transcript which shows the hours worked in practice and university simulation time, but you will need to submit your reflections in addition as evidence of those hours.

Please discuss this with your Practice Assessor in the first instance, as guidance does vary between placements. In general, any spoke days should follow these principles:

1. You should only look to arrange a spoke day within the same Trust & Site.
2. The spoke must be directly relevant to the placement.
3. Speak to placement about how to arrange spoke opportunities – some of our areas have timetables or a list of areas and are happy for students to arrange.
4. If you are not currently on track to pass the placement, you should not be arranging spoke days unless this is in order to fulfil or achieve a missing proficiency/medication management etc.

Yes, that’s right. You must only count PLT on ePAD (for the NMC requirements) on your base placement because we have already accounted for your away placement hours. However, PLT, away placement and uni days all count as OTJ hours for Aptem (apprenticeship).

You can log the whole shift as one episode of PLT. Then, consider getting feedback/doing a reflection on one thing you did during the day.

Your cross-field experience and inter-professional working sections of the ePAD are available to you during all your placements across the year, so you should be putting reflections on learning there. And don’t forget the initial, mid-point and final interviews and OAR for each away placement as well.

Yes, but not away placement interviews as we have already accounted for these – PLT is strictly to protect your learning time on base placement. Your entire away placement is already protected as learning time because you’re supernumerary.

No. Your OAR should be completed at the end of the placement, and you won’t have completed your base placement yet. Your base OAR must be completed at the end of the base placement.

Some cohorts may be given specific deadlines, but as a guide, you should do them around half-way through your away placement. If you are completing them too close to the beginning or the end, you won’t be able to demonstrate that you made any progress through your placement.

All this information is in the ePAD Assessment Guide on Moodle.

Please upload these to the record of communications but remember to use a sensible file name and description.

As long as everything that needs to be signed off is signed off on your ePAD, we will check that and put the grade onto Moodle. You don’t need to submit anything direct to Moodle yourself for your ePAD.

No, changing a placement is not possible once the allocations have been made. View criteria for a change of placement. If there are extenuating circumstances that you think need to be considered, please email hscplacements@glos.ac.uk as soon as possible, and we can look into it for you.

To avoid the need to change placements, please make sure your ARC profile is up to date at all times, including addresses, conflicts of interest, and driver status.

As a University, we have our established Practice Partners that provide us with placements each year, we have formal agreements with these partners and capacity is managed carefully. When sourcing/suggesting own placement, this will be dependent on capacity and whether it fits any gaps in the breadth of experience needed to register.

Setting up a new placement can be a long process, and we cannot usually do this on an individual basis. However, we are open to establishing new relationships with potential practice partners if deemed suitable. Please contact hscplacements@glos.ac.uk.

The important total hours to look at is the Worked Hours or Completed Hours, as long as you are happy that these are correct, then it does not matter if there is a slight discrepancy with allocated hours.

Please wait at least 48 hours for the hours to upload once your practice educator has approved your timesheet. This is usually the reason why the hours do not look right.

No, this is not the case. There are various reasons why a placement might require a car driver, and it does not mean that you will necessarily be placed further away. If you don’t indicate you have a car, you may be reducing the variety of placement opportunities available, and you will still be expected to travel to more distant placements using public transport. Please read the Placement Agreement for important information on travelling to and from placement.

Please make sure you have completed the evaluation for your previous placement. This is usually the reason you cannot see your most recent placement allocation.

Smartcards can only be used in Gloucestershire Health & Care, AWP and most GP placements.

Please refer all smartcard questions to the issuing trust. Gloucestershire University cannot reset smartcard PINs, take reports of lost cards or issue new cards.

Please refer all questions about IT accounts to the trust in which you are currently placed. Usually, the trust education team will be able to help arrange an IT Account for you.