My transformative six week placement in social care

I am a second-year adult and mental health nursing student at the University of Exeter.

My six-week placement in a social care setting has differed from my usual placements but has offered me valuable insights into providing care from a social care perspective – one that prioritises quality of life over curative interventions.

I would like to share how a placement in a social care setting has helped shape my skills, the transferable insights I’ve gained, and the broader implications for nursing students. The residential care home I was placed in opened my eyes to how social care goes far beyond “basic” caregiving. It’s about truly seeing the whole person their emotional wellbeing, their daily routines, their social connections, and of course, their clinical needs.

Shift From addressing only Healthcare requirements to addressing the Social care requirement

One of the key lessons from my social care placement has been understanding how social care differs fundamentally from a medical model. In social care, the focus is not on “fixing” the person’s condition but enhancing their quality of life, particularly for those with long-term conditions.

During the placement, I met with individuals who required stoma care. From them, I learned the priority is not about reversing their condition but ensuring they can live comfortably and confidently with it. Seeing this shift in care planning priorities highlighted the importance of promoting dignity, autonomy, and personalised care in promoting wellbeing.

When caring for people with dementia, I got to see how in social care prioritising creating comfort and stability for individuals, rather than focusing solely on clinical interventions has an impact on mood and well-being. I will take these skills with me throughout my career when practising to promote healthy living crucially treating the whole person and not just their diagnosis.

I saw upfront the difference between treating illness and enhancing day-to-day well-being. Yes, clinical interventions matter and I got to see this when the District Nurses came through. But so do the routines, relationships, and little joys that help keep people mentally and emotionally healthy.

One time on placement I was tasked with assisting a resident with eating their dinner as they were not always fully independent to do so. This person was well known for yelling frequently whenever she became anxious as a result of her dementia. While assisting her with her eating I used the opportunity to try to build some rapport. She was very worried that she would be left by herself and kept yelling don’t leave me all the time. I noticed she often found it difficult to follow what I was saying so I tried different approaches to tailoring communication so that I could try to put her at ease. After some chit-chat, she began to start smiling and became cheery. It was a completely different presentation from what I’d ever seen before. She showed a completely different side to her personality which was sweet.

By taking some time to help her relax and find out some more about her I learned about how I could help her become more settled despite the severe dementia. This experience shifted my perspective on how to fundamentally provide holistic care and how I can promote healthy living for everyone I will care for.

By being placed in a setting where people reside for supported living I developed insight into how people live in the community while managing a range of conditions from less to more complex. This is very different from the typical inpatient or outpatient settings we
often see in placements. I saw how community services and agencies support ongoing care after hospital discharge. I saw how people get on with living good quality lives with complex care conditions.

This gave me insight into what social care means for people and how it integrates with healthcare. And from now on when I do future placements or work on wards I can understand why a patient may not be getting placed in a care home. I now understand a range of reasons why this happens from the home not being able to reach the additional care requirements of that person to having a particularly busy season with not enough staff to cover additional residents.

This means I will now be able to identify and address wider social care requirements of a patient on a ward which may otherwise go unmet for weeks if unrecognised. This will be pivotal in caring for older people stuck in hospital, especially for example those with
dementia who need a different approach to meeting their care requirements.

This has broadened my understanding of the patient journey and shown me how, as a nurse, I can play a better part in optimising care and improving outcomes for those people with additional health and social care requirements.

My awareness of the health inequalities that act as barriers for people taken care of in social care has also improved as a result of being placed in a social care setting. I see how it is often left to each care home provider to prioritise resource allocation. For example for the prevention of skin tears – The NHS guidelines state that applying a certain emollient is the best way to reduce painful skin tears in older adults. Skin tears might sound minor, but they can lead to infections or hospitalisations if left untreated.

Despite this guideline, the local primary care network policy would not cover the cost of prescribing these emollients. As a result, it was left to the care home to decide whether to prioritise following the best practice guidelines and buy the emollients for the residents or go with something that is not as good. Fortunately, the care home was in a good position to provide these emollients and skin barriers however not all can and many people will have to go without them despite the increased risk of skin tears due to age.

This experience showed me the truth about how: prevention saves money and reduces suffering. As a student nurse, seeing these inequalities in action encourages us to ask the right questions and to advocate for smarter resource allocation. Even after I leave the social care placement, I’ll carry that perspective into any hospital or community environment I work in, because preventing harm is just as vital as treating it.

Learning Opportunities
Although the placement was in a residential home there was no shortage of opportunities to get involved in clinical care such as wound care management with the district nurses twice a week, regular catheter care, care planning, learning from wider MDT such as occupational therapists, carers and the hospice nursing team.

I got to look at the wider picture of somebody’s care journey by being with someone who when I first met them looked well and went about their everyday normal lives to deteriorating rapidly, getting seen by a multidisciplinary team such as GPs and paramedics, to then the hospice nurses coming to provide treatment and eventually getting to say their goodbyes with families.

Seeing their journey from this perspective provided valuable insight into how teams collaborate to effectively provide high-quality care that respects healthcare needs but also their social care needs in the care home.

Approaching Death Differently
The different approaches taken to dying in a social care setting taught me how this is done in a dignified and person-centred way.

In social care, there is often an opportunity to ensure a “good death,” emphasising comfort, dignity, and respect for the individual’s wishes. Careful planning, open communication with families, and a calm environment all contribute to this. This contrasts with what I often saw in my hospital placements, where deaths can often be unexpected and may not always allow for the same level of dignity or comfort. This has helped me appreciate the value of planning for end-of-life care and tailoring it to the individual’s needs and preferences to ensure person-centred care.

Summary of Learning Opportunities
My placement has given me the chance to develop a range of skills that extend beyond clinical care:

• Holistic Assessment: Addressing not just physical needs but also social, emotional, and spiritual factors that impact a person’s quality of life.
• Adaptive Communication: Adjusting my communication style to meet the unique needs of each resident, whether through simpler language, non-verbal cues, or validation techniques.
• Behavioural Management: Learning to de-escalate challenging situations and provide reassurance for residents experiencing confusion, fear, or distress.
• Collaboration: Working closely with multidisciplinary teams, including OTs, district nurses, and social care staff, to deliver person-centred care.

Why Social Care Placements Matter
My placement in social care offers unique and essential learning opportunities, including:

• Developing skills to improve the quality of life for individuals with long-term conditions, rather than focusing solely on cure or recovery.
• Understanding the importance of planning for end-of-life care and ensuring a dignified death.
• Building a holistic approach to care that integrates physical, mental, social, and emotional needs.
• Identifying and addressing social care requirements and inequalities which can be transferred to a wide range of settings.
• Showed me what it is really like to provide care in care homes and how rewarding it can be to care for people in these settings.

My placement has taught me to see beyond the traditional healthcare approach, and rather to focus on enhancing the quality of life for individuals and ensuring dignity in both living and dying. These transferable skills— empathy, holistic assessment, and adaptive communication will shape my future practice and are vital for integrated, person-centred care.