While the frequency of these feelings appeared to decrease as the placement period
progressed, it was perceived that what mentors were expecting of students did not in most
instances correlate with the University’s expectations of what a first clinical placement
should entail. This theme of feeling ‘out of my depth’ was most apparent amongst the
students who travelled to South Africa, but was also present to a lesser degree amongst the
New Zealand cohort, one of whom summarized the feelings of their peers by reporting that
“…there was (sic) a lot of times we had – we were well out of depth in our scope of practice”.