1. Annual Nursing Mentor Update

2. Types of Learners
Full time BSc/MSc – Self funded nursing/midwifery students
Degree Nursing Apprentice – (employees – salaried learners)
Assistant Practitioner – Apprentice – (employees – salaried learners)
Nursing Associate – (employees – salaried trainees)
Paramedic insights – short placements
Discuss the supervision of the differing types of learners within practice. All students, with the use of coaching skills can be supervised by a registered professional – summative assessment for nursing students has to always be with a ‘live’ mentor
Full time University students – who will be self funding from Sept 17 with a student loan – all nursing students work a 37.5 hour week apart from nursing cohorts - March 15 and 16 and Sept 15 who do a 30 hour week until the sign off period.
Degree Apprenticeship in Nursing – these are salaried learners and with the support of their employer they have 2 supernumerary practice days a week within their home placement/alternative placement and 5 days a week in defined placements, such as Health Visiting and the final ’sign-off’ placement.  They will need to be supervised by a ‘live’ mentor during these periods.
Higher Apprenticeships (with a foundation degree) – these are Trainee Assistant Practitioners (previously foundation degree students) – these are salaried learners who work full time in practice. On completion, they will be Assistant Practitioners working at Band 4. Successful candidates have the opportunity to apply to enter the BSc (Hons) Nursing course on the apprentice route, if agreed by their employer.  Supervision and assessment of their outcomes is by a suitably registered health professional.  A ‘live’ mentor is needed to sign the practice documents to confirm the learner has been suitably supervised and assessed by a registered professional at the end of each module.
Nursing Associate
This is a full time Dip HE course via a Work Based Learning route. 
These trainees will have placements in their own core area and in alternative core areas where they will be summatively assessed.
As a minimum their supervisor should be a registered professional.
Trainees are paid as employees throughout the course and are identifiable as students during designated practice placements (HEE have identified 3 types of placement area – in hospital, close to home, and at home that trainees must experience during the course.
Paramedic insights
Paramedic students are required by their regulatory body, the HCPC, to experience care given in areas other than the Ambulance Trust.
These paramedic placements, in Acute and Community Healthcare Organisations, are either one or two weeks in length.
Supervision needs to be by a competent professional

3. Hub and Spoke placements
Students attend a core placement with a named mentor who is accountable for all summative assessment – hub placement During the placement the mentor may arrange visits or selected shifts in related areas (e.g. in radiography). Named mentor from the core placement remains accountable for coordination of learning and summative assessment – spoke placements
Discuss how to make the best use of learning opportunities and capacity.
A large number of short one or two week placements are no longer being used by the practice team to place students and these are now being used as spoke placements where the mentor organises their placement/visits i

4. Student Placement Hours - Timesheets
Please ensure students record the hours they are present in the clinical area -start time and finish time
Breaks are no longer deducted from the overall hours
For patient safety reasons students should take a break during the working day. This will also ensure they learn the importance of caring for themselves
Students no longer deduct breaks from their overall total hours for the day
These hours are counted as hours spent in practice, rather than hours worked in practice.
Students should not frontload hours – for example, if they are allocated for 6 weeks then they should spend 6 weeks in practice and not frontload hours so they only spend 4 weeks in practice
Students still  negotiate as normal their shifts with their mentor and this can be a local agreement with their mentor.  However, they must work:
a minimum 37.5 hours per week or 75 hours per fortnight. (cohorts March 16/15 and Sept 15/ this will be 30 hrs per week or 60 hours per fortnight). There may be some negligible over- or under-recording in a particular week but over the period of a placement the full number of hours will have been completed
Whilst students they need to learn the importance of taking breaks, as per EU regulations but also they are learning to take of themselves to enable them to care of patients.

5. Self funding students
What expectations might self-funded students have of their practice placement learning experience?
How will this affect you as a mentor?
How can expectations be managed?
Self-funding students will take out a government loan with Student Finance England which has to be paid back once they are earning over £ per year. This loan is to pay for the course and they can also take out a living or maintenance loan which again has to be paid back.
Currently travel expenses are continuing to be paid by Government

6. NMC Consultation Implemented at end of 2018
New education framework for AEIs, practice placement and work placed partners.
SLAIP standards will no longer be in use
New standards of proficiency for the future registered nurse.
Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s (RPS) Single competency framework for all prescribers.
See NMC website – link on slide – for consultation documents

7. Due process of assessment
Induction to welcome student to setting
The initial meeting to formulate learning contracts and action plans
Continuous assessment of core professional values
The mid-point formative assessment to monitor progress, revise contract or set action plan if necessary
Seeking feedback from colleagues and service users
The end-of-placement summative assessment to assess student against set criteria

8. Concern that a student is struggling
Identify the issue early in the placement and raise it with the student. Discuss with the student how the issue could be addressed. Consider contacting the link lecturer/education champion.
Develop an action plan in collaboration with the student and provide support to help the student achieve the agreed outcomes by a set review date. Document in student’s practice assessment document.
Review progress by set date. If objectives met document this in the assessment document. If not, inform the link lecturer or education champion and discuss further action planning and consequences for the outcome of the placement

9. Cause for Concern Process
You must inform the University as soon as there is evidence of a student concern or lack of progress.
When would you remove a student from practice?
How would you start the cause for concern process?
What forms would you complete to alert management and University?
What are the implications for a sign off student who now has a cause for concern and will not be signed off?
How could this have been avoided?

10. New Online Placement System
June 2018 onwards:
A new on line audit process
All clinical staff will be able to access and complete their clinical practice education audit online
To renew the audit
To make changes prior to renewal
Online Timesheets
Viewing student allocations
All clinical staff will be able to access the allocations on line rather than s
Discuss the new on line placement system being implemented at ARU
From June all audits/allocations/timesheets will be online.
Key staff will be able to complete or renew the audit online and submit this online to the bi-monthly PECs where the ELM/designated tutor will be able to submit the audit to University
There will be training/screenshot materials available nearer the time to ensure all are comfortable with the new online placement system

11. Enhanced Practice Support Framework
Lead Mentor
Mentors
Coaches
All Registered staff in each area will be prepared for their role in this framework:
Lead mentors: (one in each area) are role models for mentoring and are responsible for overseeing the quality of practice learning in their area.
Mentors: will focus on managing student placement experience. Continue to retain responsibility and accountability for student assessment and meet NMC mentorship standards.
Coaches: Every registered nurse required to act in a coaching role with students. Coaches will support students to develop and achieve a daily goal, which is aligned to one of their practice outcomes.
This framework was developed from research funded by HEE which tasked ARU and UoE to explore the current situation with regard to mentorship.
The EPSF has been piloted in 8 clinical areas and was positively evaluated by mentors ,lead mentors and students. It is now being gradually implemented in organisations across the area.
Mentors will still need to work with students in order to inform their assessment decisions. The 40% requirement can also be met through the allocation of appropriate coaches, feedback discussions with coaches and reviewing the students coaching documentation. The relationship between mentor and student will be looser than present but is a long term one that spans the entire placement. Only registered mentors can assess students
Coaches will be assigned to work with the student for a shift to support them to develop a goal aligned to one of their practice outcomes, which the students will record. Coaches must be registered Nurses. If the coach considers that the students goal is appropriate to be facilitated by an HCA/HCSW, then this is permissible, but the student still needs to get feedback from that coach. Lead mentors will be monitoring the allocation of students to HCAs to ensure this is appropriate. COACHES ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY ASPECT OF STUDENT ASSESSMENT.
Students will have a coaching log(ARU) in which they will record their daily goal and the feedback from the coach. University of Essex students will have an additional progress sheet to record this. In areas where the EPSF has been implemented- all students are required to engage with this. Mentors will have this information to support them with their assessment decision making. The ARU coaching log will now be located at the back of the PAD to ensure students bring this to placement……………………….The student completes this and the coach will only sign for accuracy. It does not require additional documentation for the mentor or coach’.

12. Enhanced Practice Support Framework
If a mentor has 2 students:
One student works with the mentor to achieve a daily goal whilst the other student works with a coach (a registered professional) to achieve their daily goal.
This meets the NMC requirements of 40% of time working either directly or indirectly with student.
When the mentor is off duty – the students can be assigned to work with a coach for the shift to meet their daily goal.
The mentor must gather feedback from the coaches and meet regularly with the student.

13. Electronic Practice Assessment
Click here for information on sign-off placement & how to review past assessments
Click here to access the online training course
Click here for searchable database & to contact support team
To find the MyProgress website ‘Google’ “MyProgress Anglia Ruskin” the website should be the top result.
From here you can navigate to the online training course; searchable helpdesk; information for sign-off placement (which includes how to search for previously completed student assessments); access student documents to complete assessments. Student assessments are completed by logging into MyProgress using the students username and password. A mentor account is created automatically when the mentor completes the mentor registration form; logging into the mentor account allows the mentor to rack the students they have mentored providing evidence for the triennial review.
Click here to access pre-registration nursing student documents
Click here to access Nursing Associate documents

14. MyProgress moving forward…
You said……..
“Typing on the tablets was difficult”
You said……..
“you were not adequately prepared when students arrived in practice with the tablets”
We showed students how to enable speech to text on the tablets.
We developed an online training package and searchable help desk and seconded an NMC mentor to support you in practice.
You said……..
“it was difficult to see if you had completed all the required assessments”
You said……..
“having to move back and forth between forms was annoying”
Feedback from mentors and students has helped in the development of the system. We are continuing to make improvements and welcome feedback from mentors.
These are some of the bigger changes we have made other more subtly tweaks to the system are also ongoing such as the addition of an extra non-compulsory documents to allow the recording of additional information regarding the student (the additional optional comments form) – this was added in response to requests from practice based education teams who wished to have the facility to record when they had worked with the student or the adaptations they had made in practice to support the students learning – but it can be used by any professional to document information relating to the student outside of the assessment process.
The assessments are now all linked to a framework which clearly shows what has been completed.
We joined relevant forms together and added the appropriate information documents to each section of the assessment

15. Working together to assure the quality of the learning environment
HEI’s and Placement Providers work closely together to assure the quality of the student practice learning experience:
Audits
Practice Education Committees (PEC)
Student Evaluations
Moderation of Practice Assessment
External reviews
Quality Learning Environment Group (QLEG)
The universities and the placement providers are in regular communication and are constantly overseeing the capability of every area to continue to be able to offer a quality learning experience for students. Situations with practice areas can be very fluid and it is important that any changes in status are communicated quickly. Established channels of communication include the practice team, link lecturers and Education Champions.
Audits are formally conducted every 21 months but are reviewed every two months, so it is not something that is set in stone.
The university and key people from the organisation meet every two months at the Pec and have a number of standing agenda items. This includes the capacity of the areas to support students and cross matching this with the current numbers of mentors each area has.
Student evaluations are a good source of feedback as to the practice learning experience the student is having and again this provides an opportunity to identify areas of excellence and areas which may be struggling. Student evaluations reviewed and discussed as part of the PEC meetings.
External reviews discussed from CQC, Monitor, QIPF, Professional Body, NHSLA discussed at each PEC
QLEG – These meetings are held quarterly between education leads from Placement providers and mentorship leads from ARU. These meetings are interprofessional and support AHP and nursing and midwifery student experience. The focus is on enhancing the quality of the student practice experience and sharing best practice with mentor support and development.

16. Practice Assessment Documents
Are there any questions related to completion of Student Practice Assessment Document?
For example:
Fine Grading – most common concerns (mentor portal)
Formative Assessment feedback
Summative Assessment feedback
Interpersonal skills profile
Practice outcomes
Action plans
Patient Pathway Tool
ARU:

17. ARU: www.anglia.ac.uk/mentors
Activities
Please see hand-outs for group activities
Completing these activities will support your evidence for Revalidation.
Following this update review these activities and document in the Triennial Review document.
Reflect on the learning opportunities you offer students in your clinical are (pp 7-8 in Triennial Review document on mentor portal)
ARU:
Give examples of fine grading from both ARU a

18. Examples of Action plans for achieving and under- achieving students can be found on the mentor portal

19. THANK YOU! THANK YOU FOR ATTENDING AND FOR YOUR
CONTINUED SUPPORT OF OUR STUDENTS
Please hand in your mentor evaluations to the session facilitator