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Liz Whitney

Page history last edited by sceptrept 15 years ago

Tell us what you really think! Putting service users at the centre of healthcare student assessment.

Jan Porter and Liz Whitney , University of Bradford

 

User involvement is at the heart of all current NHS policy and guidelines in the UK. This ranges from healthcare curriculum planning, service planning and delivery to evaluation of services.  The main driver for this is that the general public have voiced that they want more influence over health and social care services. Professionals are then better able to provide a quality service if they understand what local communities need. The Nursing and Midwifery Council, the regulatory body for nursing and midwifery in England and Wales decreed in 2007 that service users should also be involved in the assessment of midwifery students by 2009. They did not however state how this should happen.

 

In the Division of Midwifery and Women’s Health at the University of Bradford, service users are involved in selecting students for entry to midwifery programmes, teaching, course management and curriculum planning. Users are often asked to participate in healthcare education for students to learn and practice their clinical skills in the clinical setting, but they are rarely asked to evaluate student performance.  Students participate in these activities but do not always reflect on the impact of their participation in the care of individual clients.

 

The purpose of this paper is to share an innovative approach to assessment that has placed service users at the centre of the process. A draft framework was produced and shared with the clinical areas, service users and students for their consideration. Comments were received and incorporated into the assessment draft and from this an assessment tool was developed.

 

The assessment was piloted with a cohort of year 3 students in 2008 that had been on a variety of clinical placements. Students had some initial concerns about the process but all evaluated the experience very positively. Many commented on the ethical issues and this brought ethics to life for them. Some service users commented that it was nice to be able to express their opinion of the care received and clinical colleagues who had some misgivings also felt the assessment worked well.

 

We feel that we have developed a useful strategy for real involvement of service users in the education of healthcare students. This places women at the centre of care mirroring the Maternity Matters agenda (DH 2007). We will continue to expand the level of user involvement in all aspects of midwifery education which can only benefit all concerned.

 

Reference

Department of Health (2007) Maternity Matters: Choice, access and continuity of care in a safe service. London, DH.

 

Key Words:  User involvement, Reflection, Feedback, Assignment, Midwifery

 

 

Presentation

 

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