Student placements

Unless there is potential risk to yourself or others, you are not obliged to tell others about your disability or neurodivergence. However, telling others (disclosing) is a key step in getting the support you need on placement.

There are lots of reasons why students don't feel comfortable disclosing. It's important that placement providers and particularly practice supervisors foster a supportive and open environment for sharing. There is a legal obligation to provide reasonable adjustments if a student meets the legal definition of disability in your country. This will often include those who are neurodivergent. The RCN encourages reasonable adjustments to be made, regardless of whether the legal definition is met because this helps everyone do their best work. 

Speak to your university (academic staff or disability services) if you anticipate that some placements will cause issues for you. They should work with you to understand your access needs including:
• Physical environment accessibility issues
• Location and transport needs
• Specific needs around breaks/nutrition/shift patterns due to your disability or neurodivergence
And consider this when allocating placements. 

Information you disclose to your university won’t be automatically shared with placement providers. Make sure you are aware of your university’s processes around sharing of information with your consent and any established tools they have to help you have conversations about your needs on placement. For example, some universities have a letter template or needs assessment template that you can share with your placement supervisor.

As soon as you’re able to, get in touch with your practice supervisor to let them know about your needs. Be sure to:

• Share information they may need about you to understand how to support you.
• Establish how information about you will be shared and who with. This is your choice but not sharing could make it difficult to implement some adjustments.
• Ask any questions you need to help you proactively identify reasonable adjustments you will need.
• Identify actions and who is responsible for each action. Add in deadlines or review dates if needed.
• Share the agreed way forward with stakeholders.
• When circumstances change or if adjustments are not working, address this again with stakeholders as soon as possible.
  
• Contact the RCN if you feel you are not being granted reasonable adjustments or are experiencing discrimination.

As a practice supervisor, you play a key role in supporting students with lived experience of disability and neurodivergence on placement. Whilst students should remain in control of their information, the onus shouldn't be only on them to set up the reasonable adjustments they require. In fact, they often won't be able to do this without you. Your attitude is so important and has the power to encourage or discourage future disclosures.  

Make sure you are aware of:

• your duties under disability legislation and what 'reasonable' means. What advice is available from your employer on this? 
• How you will share information about the student that they give to you - remember your obligations under GDPR and ensure you include the student in these decision, obtaining consent. 
• where you can get support if you don't know what to do. This could be your manager, trade union, the university, occupational health, your HR & training teams. 
• the importance of fostering an inclusive work environment so all those in the team feel they can be themselves and share their challenges
• how a strengths and challenges approach can help you establish student's needs
• latest developments in equalities. You can't be an expert in everything, but this is far from a static landscape and professional development in this area will empower you to give the right support.
• Who your contacts are at the university and how you can improve communications between your placement and the university

You will need to think about what the students needs to do to complete the placement and to be able to practice in employment once they graduate. 

Take time to reflect on your experiences supporting students with lived experience of disability and neurodivergence and think about how you can share your learning to make your placement provider more inclusive in future.