Developing understandings of clinical placement learning in three professions: work that is critical to care.

Background: This study contributes further evidence that healthcare students' learning is affected by underlying assumptions about knowledge, learning and work.

Aims: To explore educators and students' understandings of early clinical placement learning in three professions (medicine, nursing and audiology) and examine the profound impacts of these understandings on students' learning and healthcare work.

Methods: Narrative interviews were undertaken with 40 medicine, nursing, and audiology students and 19 educators involved in teaching these student cohorts. Interview transcripts were read repeatedly and interpreted using current practice-based understandings of learning.

Results: Across interviews and professions, students and educators made distinctions between aspects of clinical placements which they understood as "learning" and those which they tended to disregard as "work". In their descriptions of learning in clinical workplaces, medicine and nursing students and educators privileged activities considered to be technical or specialised, over activities that were understood to be more "basic" to care. Furthermore, interviews with medical students and educators indicated that rich and unique possibilities for learning from other members of the healthcare team were missed.

Conclusions: Distinctions between "learning" and "work" are unhelpful and all participation in clinical workplaces should be understood as valuable practice. Action is needed from all parties involved in clinical placement learning to develop understandings about learning in practice.