Students should be provided with the right support to help them to complete their programme. This includes access to the right people, who are appropriately prepared to help them meet their learning outcomes.
Who supports students will depend on a number of different factors, including what environment it is, the programme outcomes of individual students, individual student needs, and what skills or competencies are being taught.
Our standards state that all students must be supervised in practice learning. However, we don’t say that this must mean that there are ‘practice supervisors’ within each practice environment. Students can be supervised in an indirect way, as long as our standards are met. More information can be found on practice supervision in the sections on practice supervision and learning environments and experiences.
Students must also have the opportunity to learn from a wide range of people and professionals. This includes all nurses, midwives and nursing associates in a practice environment, regardless of whether they are acting as a practice supervisor, but also members of the public, service users and patients, other staff, including other employee groups such as phlebotomists and maternity support workers. Peer to peer learning is also a form of learning that can be used. The student should feel empowered to seek out learning opportunities and involve as many people as they need in order to learn from the experience. More information can be found on this in the section on learning environments and experiences.
We require that all students have access to a nominated person while in practice, who must be available to support students and their concerns, in line with the following standard:
Standards for student supervision and assessment:
Approved education institutions, together with practice learning partners, must ensure that:
1.5 there is a nominated person for each practice setting to actively support students and address student concerns
The nominated person does not necessarily need to be based within the learning environment, and in many cases it may be inappropriate for them to be so. For example, if there is only one other individual within an environment and they are acting as a practice supervisor.
We do not state who this person might be, or what qualifications or registration they need to have, only that they must be available to students. It will be up the AEI, with their practice learning partners, to decide who can fulfil this role, provided our standards are met and public protection is upheld.
The role that different people have in student learning, will be dependent on a number of different factors. The learning environment, and the roles that people play within that are for the AEI, with its practice learning partners to determine. The student should be provided with the appropriate information, support and opportunities to make the most of all learning experiences.
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