Preparing for Transition as a Registered Practitioner
6NH065 – Summative Assignment Brief
The assessment for this module offers two options for completion and submission;
Either
Option 1:
A written professional development plan (PDP) including rationale: 2500 words +/-10%. You can separate this by having a maximum of 500 words for the PDP and 2000 words to rationalise the PDP.
Or
Option 2:
An Oral/Video presentation of a personal professional development plan – duration 20 minutes.
– As part of this you will need to provide a script and a reference list.
Details
The process of developing your PDP for this assignment, will involve self-analysis, reflection, and a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis – this will be your formative assessment and will need to be included in your appendices. You will create a PDP in alignment to aspects identified in your formative (reflection and/or SWOT) as potential areas to improve upon or potential goals to set as part of the reflection.
A professional development plan (PDP) is a tool to support you to identify professional goals/skills to improve upon for the benefit of yourself, your patients, your colleagues and your employer, on an ongoing basis. Professional development planning is a continuous process using your experience and skills, to identify your goals, and the support you may require to achieve these goals. Your goals need to be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Timely) and practicable.
Your PDP will be focused primarily on your transition from student nurse to registrant, and possibly beyond this, considering your future career aspirations or potential skills that may support your future career aspirations i.e. if you want to be a band 6 in 2 years’ time then you may want to consider improving upon your delegation skills as part of this. You could display these as short, medium and long term goals (it is your choice on what you consider the length of time for a goal to be classed as short, medium or long). It would be beneficial if you have only 3-5 professional development aspects stated in your PDP and due to the word count you may want to rationalise and provide depth to 3 skills/goals instead of all 5, for example.
The PDP will be supported by a goals/skills focused approach with an analytical evidenced based rationale. This can be written in first person and third person to allow you to apply the research to yourself, your situation and your PDP, where required. Your accompanying rationale will justify your plan, and outline the reasons why you have chosen your particular goals, considering their value for yourself and the professional role.
You may wish to use a template for your PDP, there are two examples in this assessment information topic on Canvas, or you can develop your own, this is your choice but it must be SMART.
Module Learning Outcomes
LO1 Appraise the mechanisms that can be used to influence organisational change and public policy, demonstrating an appreciation of political influence upon healthcare.
To meet learning outcome 1, you will need to refer to influences on organisational change and possible strategic aims which may be guided by policy or reports that relate directly to your development needs and the influence this has on organisational change and the need for you to change, develop or improve. This could relate to multiple aspects including but not limited to: human resourcing issues, SBAR (Situation, Background, Assessment and Recommendation) introduction, recruitment and retention of staff, leadership
development, delegation, revalidation and you would need to identify how these link to political influences.
Another example might be the Francis report which came from a public enquiry into poor care in a hospital trust, in response to this, the government commissioned The Shape of Caring report, which ultimately led to the introduction of the Nursing Associate role, which will affect the newly registered nurses role in supervision of others. Your development need could be leadership and therefore this change has made it even more important to improve your leadership skills because you will manage, co-ordinate and support nursing associates in enhancing patient care.
LO2. Evaluate the challenges of working with people, their families, carers and colleagues to improve quality and safety of care
Your PDP may include skills or topics such as; communication, time-management, anti – discriminatory care, inter professional working for example. In your rationale you will make links between the importance of the skills that you identify in your PDP and evaluating the evidence-based impact of the skills on patients, colleagues and yourself. As part of evaluating, you can state the negative aspects of the skills (if not carried out appropriately and the influence on poor quality care) as well as the positive aspects (if carried out appropriately) of the skills and its contribution to high quality safe care. The skills you discuss shall be the skills that you state in your PDP.
LO3. Critically analyse leadership behaviours and the developmental needs of self and others in leading initiatives to enhance care
It is important to discuss some leadership theory and leadership styles. You could apply the leadership style to yourself and compare the style you may possess with a style you may want to use from the research you conduct. It would be beneficial to discuss and analyse the importance of Nurse Leadership, what the NHS leadership development strategy is and relate this to your role in the supervision of others, and in managing care for example being practice supervisor to support students, leading patient care and supporting nursing associates and your colleagues.
LO4 Appraise how reflective and reflexive practices have informed the development of self and others
For your formative assessment you will be completing a reflection and SWOT analysis in order to develop a PDP to inform your development plan, you will include this reflection and SWOT in the appendices of your summative piece of work. In the rationale, please discuss the nature and value of your personal reflection, why is reflection important and how it has and will continue to contribute to your development and the importance of this on self and others for example: revalidation and skill acquisition.
Assessment of Practice Assessment Document (PAD)
During your practice placement, a practice assessor who will assess you to determine your achievement of proficiencies and programme outcomes for practice learning. The decisions of practice assessors will be informed by feedback sought and received from practice supervisors.
Your academic assessor will support you during this process, and will liaise with your practice assessor therefore it is important for you to provide details of your placement and practice assessor to your academic assessor so they be contacted. Your academic assessor is also your facilitator for this module. I have created a student guide to support you with effectively completing your PAD and OAR.
