The development of a scale to assess practitioner capacity to engage in clinical education

Clinical educators play an important role in the development of clinical skills during health care undergraduates’ practice placements. The supportiveness of the learning environment and the attitude of the clinical educator towards student development are considered to be important factors that impact upon practice placement experience, although these influences are multi-factorial. This pilot study is the first phase of an action research project exploring practice placements in podiatry. The aim of this pilot study is to develop a scale to measure podiatrists’ capacity to engage in clinical education using criteria considered to contribute to overall clinical educator capability. An online survey consisting of 74 questions was developed and clinical educators from the podiatry services of 25 English National Health Service (NHS) Trusts were targeted. There was a 66 per cent response rate to the survey. Item–total correlations were calculated and nine subscales identified, all with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients above 0.7. The scale can be used to explore the factors that influence podiatrists’ capacity to engage with clinical education. It may also be utilised in the recognition and prediction of other potential variables that influence clinical educators’ capacity to undertake the role. This may therefore be used to identify support and training requirements. The scale could be adapted for application to other health care professions.