Overview
Developing an innovative approach to placement learning designed to enhance the quality of the mentorship experience and promote good quality, appropriate and patient-centred learning experiences.
Care Setting
Education and Training
Care Group
All Care Groups
Evidence Base for Practice
The approach to placement learning for the mental health nursing programme is based on a hub and spoke and base placement model. This has been informed substantially by national work being undertaken in Scotland in relation to Facing the Future, the National Framework for Pre-registration Mental Health Nursing in Scotland (2008), the literature review commissioned by NES, (Campbell, 2008), and a review of local placement provision for the mental health nursing branch programme (Addo, 2008).
The development group was made up of academic and clinical staff would considered action 15 of the 3Rs report. The applicaton to NES was also made jointly.
Quality assurance/impact of practice
The project will be evaluated by RGU. Further details will be avaliable as the project progresses.
Practice Summary
The project is an example of joint working between Robert Gordon University and NHS Grampian. The overall aim of the project is to develop an innovative approach to placement learning designed to enhance the quality of the mentorship experience and promote good quality, appropriate and patient-centred learning experiences. The project was successful in attracting NES funding for support of it's implimentation and evaluation.
Students will be placed within to key practice placements - the hub placements for their whole programme of study. The hub placements will reflect nursing care that is either acute in nature or care that is ongoing. It is intended that students will have the same named mentor in each of these hubs for the duration of their studies. It is hoped that students become part of this team and have a deeper involvement in the care that is offered and that their own learning will be at a deeper level.
The spoke placements are placements which are shorter in duration and will be devised to enhance the learning in the hub placement. These should also provide students with some flexibilty to allow them to follow service users and carers journeys. It is hoped that voluntary agencies may be able to provide spoke placements to further enhance the learning opportunites.
The project will be subject to a robust evaluation by RGU which will involve students, mentors, service users and carers.
Practice Detail
Students continue to spend 50% of their course within clinical practice. While on placement students spend 30 hours per week in clinical practice and 7.5 hours per week undertaking on line learning activities which encourage reflection on experience.
They have 2 hub placements to which they return in each stage of their course. This should encourage much deeper learning and improved relationships with their mentors. From these hubs, students can have spoke placements which can enhance their learning experience.
Challenges
This project involves a huge change to established practice of allocation of students to practice placements. The planning of the project involved several months of collaboration between academic staff of Robert Gordon University and from mentors and managers from NHS Grampian.
Information has been made avaliable to both students and mentors in a variety of "roadshow" events. Feedback from these events will be incorporated into the evaluation.