KLUe - Clinical Education Units

The Clinical Education Unit (KLUe) is an initiative through the university-municipality collaboration between NTNU and Ålesund municipality. The goal is to strengthen cooperation on education, professional development, and research, which can further contribute to increased patient safety and quality of services. Students’ practical studies constitute half of the nursing education and are therefore crucial for the development of clinical competence. Research shows the need to strengthen cooperation between educational institutions and the practice field to ensure good learning environments in clinical practice.

Project organization

The steering group for the project consists of the head of the IHA department and the chief executive for healthcare in Ålesund municipals. The working group includes clinical specialists, and administrative managers, and other representatives from Ålesund municipality, along with academics from NTNU and the Development Center for Nursing Homes and Home Services (USHT) Møre and Romsdal, student representatives, and a project manager.

What is KLUe?

The Clinical Education Unit (KLUe) is developed to meet the need for collaboration between education and practice arenas. Internationally, such units are called Dedicated Education Units, and research shows that clinical education units can lead to a strengthened learning environment for students and staff.

KLUe is an arena for the development of highly concrete, practice-oriented learning activities, knowledge transfer, as well as quality and development work.

Purpose

• Strengthen cooperation between educational institutions and the practice field

• Increased clinical competence
• Increased education quality

• Ensure continuity in learning and follow-up of students
• Promote collaboration on professional development and research

A KLUe unit is characterized by:

• Students feeling more included in the practice site and extensive collaboration between teachers and supervisors, contributing to a good learning environment.
• Students participating in quality improvement work and professional development projects in the businesses.
• KLUe promotes recruitment and helps retain nurses in municipal health services.
• KLUe continues the initiated development work in municipal health services such as Strengthened Guidance in Practice (SVIP) and Electronic Student Evaluation (ESV).
   

Experiences from the project so far

The establishment of KLUe has led to closer cooperation on students’ learning between NTNU and the practice field. There has been a particular focus on developing common reception routines for students in practice, pair practice, and the use of simulation as a method to promote learning.

SVIP has been adopted as a guidance model, and supervisors have completed practice supervisor education. While it is always challenging to ensure good information flow about KLUe from management to supervisors, teachers, and students across academia and practice, this is an area of continuous improvement.

Criteria for KLUe

The working group has defined key criteria for a business to identify itself as a Clinical Education Unit.