Impact of allied health student placements for older clients’ health and wellbeing in primary healthcare settings: a systematic integrative review
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McLennan, V
Nisbet, G
Jindal, S
Miles, S
Crook, S
Nelson, K
Williams, C
Flood, V
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Abstract
Purpose: Allied health student placements in healthcare settings are complex, constantly evolving, and tailored to real-life environments. The value of student placements in acute and primary healthcare settings is reflected in enhanced student learning, improved service delivery, and positive patient outcomes. This review aims to synthesise the effects of allied health student placements in primary healthcare settings, particularly focusing on older clients’ health outcomes and satisfaction with care. Materials and methods: A systematic integrative review was conducted. The five-step integrative review approach, established by Whittemore and Knafl was used to allow the inclusion of diverse research methodologies. Five major databases, i.e., Medline-EBSCO, PubMed, PROQUEST, CINAHL, and SCOPUS were searched. The CLUSTER model was used to track additional references. Data were extracted as suggested by Whittemore and Knafl and then thematically synthesised. Results: Eleven papers were reviewed. Despite a lack of rigorous methodologies, five mixed-methods studies, four quantitative studies, one qualitative study, and one cost–benefit analysis were identified exploring the possible effects of allied health student placements for older clients. From these papers, four main themes were identified: student integration in service delivery, older clients’ health outcomes, satisfaction with care, and insights into mechanisms to achieving health and well-being outcomes. Conclusion: This review suggests that integration of allied health students into service delivery can provide additional healthcare support for older clients, but further high-quality research is needed to confirm.
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BMC Health Services Research
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25
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© The Author(s) 2025. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
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Hamiduzzaman, M; McLennan, V; Nisbet, G; Jindal, S; Miles, S; Crook, S; Nelson, K; Williams, C; Flood, V, Impact of allied health student placements for older clients’ health and wellbeing in primary healthcare settings: a systematic integrative review, BMC Health Services Research, 2025, 25, pp. 601