Developing occupational therapy and physiotherapy clinical support workers in their role in supporting student education.

This is a small, local study: 17 people answered the survey and the two focus groups had 7 and 4 participants, all from one English region, so what these support workers describe may not transfer to other services. No student outcomes were measured. Nobody checked whether students learned more, felt better supported or were assessed differently, so the study says nothing about whether this changes placements. The focus groups happened soon after the programme finished, so there is no way to know whether any of the described changes in practice lasted. Detailed background information about participants was not collected, so the authors could not tell whether people with different amounts of experience or from different disciplines have different development needs. Participants were asked no questions about risks or adverse experiences, even though unclear delegation and blurred role boundaries were themes in the data. The authors had no resources to keep the learning community going once the project ended.

The authors declared no conflicts of interest and said they received no financial support for the research, authorship or publication of the article.

Do not read this as evidence that support workers can take over student supervision, or that the training programme works. It is 17 people from one English region describing their own role in their own words, with no students followed up and no comparison group. Because participants were asked what they thought shortly after finishing the course, what actually changed on placement is unknown.