Sarah Foster

Sarah is an experienced paediatric dietitian, currently on a 12-month secondment as a Florence Nightingale AHP Fellow, working on a clinical education improvement project.

Using dietetics as a case study, she is exploring how we ensure sustainable, high quality practice-based learning for smaller allied health professions, and whether profession size makes a difference.

The perception among many in smaller allied health professions that there are factors which make it more challenging for them has not previously been explored.

Sarah has been looking at the evidence base, and collecting qualitative data from a broad range of stakeholders, primarily through semi-structured interviews.

She is now analysing this data, identifying key themes, and examples of good practice, and considering whether the issues identified affect larger and smaller professions differently. She will then be using realist synthesis methodology to explore the good practice examples, their context, and the conditions needed for them to work successfully.

Sarah will then be taking this work to her key stakeholders, to discuss the findings, and to produce evidence-based, co-designed recommendations. The aim of these recommendations will be to ensure sustainable, high quality practice-based learning, which prepares students well for the future workplace, and to embed continuing evaluation and improvement into systems.

The study findings and recommendations will be disseminated widely across the allied health professions, for whom there is expected to be some transferable learning.