Tuesday, 8 July 2025
Call for clinical placement poverty case studies
From 1 July 2025, the Commonwealth Prac Payment scheme will provide $319.50 per week to nursing, teaching, social work and midwifery students during mandatory placements. This support helps ease the financial pressure of unpaid training and recognises the essential role of practical experience in preparing students for the workforce. The ASA considers that the Prac Payment scheme should be extended to include sonography students who face significant financial and practical barriers to completing their training.
To support ASA’s advocacy for the Prac Payments scheme to be extended to sonography students, we are collecting short case examples about the impact of placement poverty on recent and current sonography students.
These can be just a sentence or two responding to the following questions. Possible example answers are included below.
- What was the impact on, or experience of, the student?
• A student drove a 6-hour round trip daily for placement because they couldn’t afford accommodation
• A student was caught taking milk from a fridge because they couldn’t afford groceries
• A student was reprimanded for poor dress – they couldn’t afford new shoes
- What was the outcome?
• Students dropping out of study
• Academic performance affected due to needing to work while on placement
Placement poverty cases would be appreciated from both current and past students and clinical educators.
If you have a story to share or would like to know more, please contact the ASA Policy team at policy@sonographers.org.