From leadership research to district action: Risk Governance in Clinical Education for Healthcare Students: A Scoping Review

AI-assisted editorial implementation guide. Proposed district actions are separate from the original authors’ findings and recommendations. Independent peer review of this guide is not asserted.

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Evidence and transfer

Education-related source: verify which participants, institutions and outcomes were actually studied before district adoption. Source publication type: review-article. License and identity checks do not establish study quality or causality.

Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the source license:

ABSTRACT Background Clinical education is essential for the training and accreditation of healthcare students. It facilitates hands‐on application and prepares students for their future roles in a dynamic and complex workforce. However, such clinical exposure comes with inherent risk, not least due to the delicate balance between patient safety and student learning. Understanding risk is particularly crucial now as we confront new technologies that will undoubtedly transform clinical education. This scoping review aims to map current practices of tertiary institutions in managing risks and incidents in healthcare students' clinical education. Methods This scoping review adhered to the Joanna Briggs Institute's methodology and was reported in accordance with PRISMA‐ScR guidelines. The search strategy considered key terms of ‘risk’, ‘clinical’ and ‘students’ in MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL and grey literature. An inductive‐deductive approach was used for thematic data analysis. Results We included 21 studies, which addressed risks in patient safety, student safety and incident response. Twelve studies reported on existing local practices, whereas nine evaluated new interventions. Ten studies intervened at the student level with education programmes, and 11 intervened at the faculty level with protocols and policies. Included studies involved students from medicine, nursing, dentistry, physiotherapy and psychology, with one study involving multiple disciplines. Conclusions Risk governance in clinical education is an emerging field, with faculties at various stages of establishing a risk governance framework. Key requisites for risk governance are robust and streamlined processes for incident reporting, incident response and policy change. Further research is needed to understand the impact of centralised multidisciplinary governance. Keywords: clinical education, healthcare students, incident reporting, risk management

Study methods

Since clinical risk governance, particularly in the context of healthcare students' clinical education, is still an emerging field [20, 21], a scoping review was considered most appropriate to map available evidence. To ensure a systematic and robust review of existing literature, this study was conducted in accordance with the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology for scoping reviews [22] and adhered to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta‐Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA‐ScR) guidelines [23]. The Population, Concept, Context (PCC) framework was used to define the review's scope and structure during the planning phase. The analysis framework combined an inductive‐deductive approach with the scoping review process outlined by Arksey and O'Malley and further refined by Levac and colleagues [24, 25, 26]. Ethics approval was not required as this study reviewed existing literature and did not conduct new research.

Limitations

To date, this review is the first to map risk interventions in healthcare students' clinical education, providing a valuable synthesis of existing evidence. All included studies were peer‐reviewed journal articles, which may indicate greater reliability. Both reviewers were final‐year medical students with experience representing students on clinical education committees. R.T. has been a representative on CESAR since its 2022 instigation; J.M.S. was in the Student Placement Advisory Group. This insider perspective may have contributed positively to the review's rigour.

A 90-day district inquiry

Days 1–15 · Appraise. Read the source methods, recruitment, comparator, outcomes and limitations. Record how the study setting differs from your district and which claim the design can support.
Days 16–30 · Design. Select one recurring district decision. Publish the decision owner, evidence requirements, consultation process and appeal route; test the process on a bounded low-risk decision. Agree participation, privacy protections, baseline and stopping rules before starting.
Days 31–60 · Observe. Collect the pre-agreed measures, keep a log of implementation changes and invite confidential voluntary feedback. Preserve existing support for staff and learners.
Days 61–90 · Decide. Track decision time, unresolved objections, documented reasons, appeals and access differences. Review whether the process changes who can participate and who carries the burden. Make a dated decision to stop, revise or extend the inquiry.

Board decision brief

Present the local problem, source setting, evidence limits, intervention, responsible owner, total cost, measured changes and uncertainty. Separate staff perceptions, implementation measures and student learning outcomes.

Attribution and reuse

Raelynn R Tong; Je Min Suh; Lisa Cheshire; Lucio Naccarella. Risk Governance in Clinical Education for Healthcare Students: A Scoping Review. The Clinical Teacher (2026-04-01). https://doi.org/10.1111/tct.70355

Prepared 2026-11-07. Source authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract and source passages are attributed extracts; this editorial guide is offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license.