Emily is a third-year Occupational Therapy student at Glasgow Caledonian University. She took part in a Peer-Assisted Learning, Project-Based Placement within NHS Education for Scotland in 2025. Read about her experience here, including what she learned, what she wish she knew before placement, and her recommendations for the future.

Part of Emily’s placement project work developed recommendations for AHP Student inductions, which you can read here.

Shauna Farrell and Ryan Borthwick are MSc Physiotherapy students at Queen Margaret University. Makena Lal and Taylor Hassett are MSc Occupational Therapy students at Edinburgh Napier University. In collaboration with Central Scotland Adventures and supported by Claire Hedley, AHP Practice Education Lead in Forth Valley, in 2025 they took part in a placement at a local social enterprise offering accessible paddle sports and outdoor adventure activities.

These Long-Arm, Peer-Assisted Learning placements had a project element and provided enormously rewarding experiences for the students and those receiving care. You can read more in Shauna and Ryan’s blog and Makena and Taylor’s blog on AHP Scot.

Practice Education and AHP Education and Teaching Leads Lynne Sheridan and Fiona Reid in NHS Tayside welcomed AHP students on Peer-Assisted, Project-based placements. These projects focused on placement experience, student feedback, careers and recruitment. Student reported increased confidence in a range of skills including data collection and analysis, research and presentation skills. For more information, see their poster available here.

A third-year BSc Hons Occupational Therapy and MSc final year Physiotherapy student carried out a project to create a health-promoting activities resource for a specialist care home for people with learning disabilities which had limited input from AHPs. This was a split placement for both students - time was spent both within the community team setting and within the care home, supervised by Physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy practice educators as well as care home staff.

This placement gave them insight into the daily running of a care home, learning more about each other’s professional roles, and including a wider range of activities in the resource. The resource was shared with care home staff to support future residents.

A first-year Physiotherapy student undertook a project placement involving digital innovation and public relations. Alongside time spent within Alzheimer Scotland services, their project developed the Alzheimer Scotland blog, twitter feed and communications. They learned a range of invaluable skills in public relations, communications, social media and digital innovation, in addition to evidence-based, subject-specific research.