Stop, talk, roll: A framework for students to manage challenging situations in fieldwork

Some students experience challenging situations during fieldwork, such as microaggressions, racist comments, and hate speech in patient treatment areas. A recent study in health care found that disruptive behaviors (e.g., bullying, racial and ethnic slurs, physical aggression) were reported in 97.8% of health care settings (Rehder et al., 2020). Historically, there is evidence of indifference to disruptive behaviors in health care, indicating that this problem is long standing and embedded in health care culture among many organizations (Porto & Lauve, 2006). These disruptive behaviors and challenging situations are widely recognized to negatively impact students, and may include psychological stress, disengagement, and decreased coping with uncertainty (Ogunyemi et al., 2020). These challenging situations also negatively impact the learning environment, preventing the student from learning during the fieldwork experience.