Innovation
The innovation relates to the creation of a multimedia book designed to enhance the current training provided to nurse and midwifery mentors in the area of clinical/practice assessment. The multimedia book contains video clips depicting the process for carrying out an assessment in the clinical/practice area. Two Practice Education facilitators from the Belfast Trust agreed to play the role of the mentor and students from the School of Drama at Queen’s acted as students. The scripts for all the scenarios were prepared by lecturers in the School of Nursing and Midwifery. The scenarios cover both formative and summative assessment and also the failing student. The book also contains hyperlinks to relevant documentation for example the NMC Standards for Pre-registration Education.
The multimedia book therefore aims to help mentors standardise their approach to the assessment of practice and to improve their ability to differentiate between students and thus increase the inter rater-reliability of this high stakes assessment. Furthermore given the challenges of having NHS staff released to attend training days this online training package will allow mentors to use it in their own time.
What prompted innovation?
The innovation was initially prompted by the NMC requirement for sign-off mentors to take full responsibility for the final judgement about whether a student has achieved the required the standard of proficiency for safe and effective practice. This stimulated a review of how mentors generally approached clinical assessment. Assessment of competence/proficiency has always posed difficulties as it is based on observation, description and analysis of nurses’ and midwives’ work. It hinges on the ability to make judgements in unique situations as they arise and on the ability to recognise the influence of subjective interpretations. Important decisions are made about students depending on whether they meet the standard as specified within the competency, not whether they have over or under-performed in comparison to their peers. Given the importance of the standard as specified within the proficiency/competency it seems reasonable to argue that there is a need for precision as to what the actual standard entails and to give careful consideration to this aspect in any assessment strategy. Thus a resource for mentors in the form of a multimedia book was felt to be a useful tool.
What makes innovation different?
It is recognised that much work has already been undertaken within specific mentorship preparation programmes to promote assessment as fundamental to the role of the mentor but what is needed is an explicit focus on the pedagogy of assessment in clinical practice, on how standards can be set and measured and how students will benefit when there are rigorous standard based assessment methods in place. The innovation around this proposal centres on the content of the multimedia book as well as the delivery method.
The multimedia book consists of interactive multimedia material and incorporates video, audio, text, animation, hyperlinks and quiz elements. It was designed to mimic real world publications so it is a familiar and universally understood format. In addition it has simple controls and is very easily navigated so little instruction is needed, thus no real learning curve is required by the users. A major advantage of the design is that the multimedia book can be easily updated online and the updated version emailed to users.
The book contains authentic scenarios that seek to challenge the mentor to use a range of assessment methods to elicit student’s level of knowledge and also ability to apply knowledge to clinical practice. This will enable mentors to set realistic standards as to what should be expected from a year 1, year 2 or year 3 student. Crucially it has the potential to provide the mentor with a forum to compare their grades with other mentors and also teachers from the HEI’s. The UK Assessment and Learning in Practice (ALPS) team have confirmed that the proposed project is a new area and is not already addressed by the ALPS team.
Changes in practice
- The innovation has received positive reviews for the Practice Education Team within the Trusts.
- The book will be used as part of mentorship training from September 2013 and after a period of 6 months will be evaluated within the context of clinical/practice assessment in the undergraduate nursing degree programme at Queen’s University Belfast.
Impact
This information will be available in January 2014.
Dissemination
- The initial proposal was presented at a Northern Ireland Regional Education Practice Partnership Forum.
- The proposal also received funding from the HEA and the proposal is available on the HEA website.