Review meetings

Face to face meetings between you and your student form the bedrock on which to build their learning in practice over the duration of the programme. There are two types of review meeting:

those that involve just mentors/practice supervisors and the student: two way meetings
those that involve the mentor/practice supervisor, the student and the Practice Tutor and so are three way or tri-partite meetings.

Two way meetings

Meetings between the mentor/practice supervisor and the student should take place as required whilst the student is gaining experience in the mentor’s/practice supervisor’s practice area. These informal meetings will support ongoing exploration and review of the student’s learning needs and achievements and can occur as and when the opportunity arises. It is advised however that no more than 10 practice days are completed without you both coming together to review where things are at. It is also a NMC requirement that mentors work with their student for a minimum of 40% of the student’s time in practice. So, for example within the stage one practice module KYN117 mentor and student time together must account for 240 hours/32 days by the end of the module.

Following review of the student’s progress so far, you should both agree the learning to be achieved during the current practice learning period and your student should fill out the first page of the Ongoing Achievement Record (OAR) in the portfolio. At the next mentor and student two way meeting, at the start of the next practice learning period you can review how far the learning needs have been met and complete the second page of the OAR. You can also agree to carry forward any unmet needs and identify new learning needs for this next practice learning period, again completing the first page of the OAR. The NMC requires that the OAR is completed in a timely way and the completed copy is transferred forward into the next practice module within the programme. There is more about the OAR in the next part of this section, which provides an overview of the portfolio contents.

Three way or tri-partite discussion meetings

These meetings take place on three occasions during each of the practice modules, thus there are nine tripartite discussion meetings in total across the programme.
The three meetings are the:

initial review meeting
mid review meeting
final assessment meeting

These meetings are when the student is required to formally meet with their mentor and practice tutor to review their progress. During these meetings what the student has achieved and what the student is going to develop further will be formally discussed. It is the student’s responsibility to negotiate the timing of these meetings and to liaise with you and the practice tutor to agree the dates of the reviews. If the student or you need support from the practice tutor at any other time support will be available via email, telephone contact or in person where relevant. Each of the three formal meetings has a different focus.

The initial review meeting, the first formal meeting within each practice module between the student, mentor and Practice Tutor is diagnostic in nature, giving the opportunity to review the student’s starting point with respect to the NMC competencies and the other practice requirements for the stage of the programme being completed. The meeting should take place early in the module and preferably before the student commences any learning in practice. The second review meeting is a formative review, which allows the current supervisor, the student and the Practice Tutor to check the learning achieved so far, and to identify the way forward for the remainder of the practice module. The third and final meeting is one of assessment, and involves the mentor in making summative judgements regarding the student’s achievement of the NMC skills and competencies at the level defined for the particular practice module.

The criteria used to assess student performance are informed by the research of Bondy (1983) and Benner (1984) and the requirements of the Nursing and Midwifery Council (2010). This is addressed in more detail in the next part of this section; ‘Using the programme’s assessment frame work’.

Next section: Using the programme’s assessment framework