Developing a service user designed tool for the assessment of student mental health nurses in practice: A collaborative process
Introduction
This article reports upon the development of a service user designed tool for the assessment of student mental health nurses in practice. This development was one phase of a larger nurse education participatory action research project (Service User Student Assessment (SUSA)) previously reported in Nurse Education Today (Stickley et al., 2010). This study aimed to assess the feasibility of integrating service user involvement into the practice assessment of mental health student nurses into the mainstream pre-registration curriculum. In the UK, courses consist of a “Common Foundation Programme”, where students study together to acquire the generic knowledge relevant to all fields of nursing. Students then move into their branch programme where they are able to choose to engage in the study of adult, child, learning disability or mental health nursing. Courses are usually at Diploma and Bachelor levels. The reported research study was conducted with mental health branch students in a Division of Nursing in England.
Academic researchers worked in collaboration with Making Waves, an organisation made up of people who have used mental health services. Making Waves have been established for approximately eight years and provide, service evaluation of mental health services, contribute to the development and evaluation of courses and provide research, education and training. They were commissioned to define the focus of an assessment tool that would be used by service users to assess student nurses in practice. This paper describes and critically analyses the process of developing and piloting the assessment tool during the implementation of the larger action research project.
The findings suggest that rather than “assess” student nurses in practice, service users should have a role in reviewing students' practice. A requirement to gain feedback on practice from service users to demonstrate students' clinical competence appeared to be a more advantageous model than the use of a structured and standardised assessment tool. Despite this, the process which informed the development of the tool offers a great deal of insight into the complexities of involving service users in the assessment of student nurses in practice and can offer useful guidance to others attempting to implement this kind of initiative. Whilst there is strong policy support for the involvement of service users in both practice and research in the United Kingdom (UK), there are few published reports of the findings of such initiatives.
Section snippets
Background
In recent years, service-user involvement in the health service has become a key component of Government policy in the UK, (Department of Health, 1990, Department of Health, 1991, Department of Health, 1992, Department of Health, 2001). This is supported nationally by the National Institute for Health Research through its INVOLVE (2010) initiative that seeks to promote public involvement in National Health Service, public health and social care research. Specifically, in nursing, the English
Conclusion
The process of developing a service user designed tool to aid the assessment of student nurses in practice has proved to be a complex task. The varied perceptions of all involved in the development and piloting of the tool resulted in a product which attempted to allow for individual experiences, wants and needs to be explored and expressed within diverse relationships and associated power differentials.
The number of complex issues which arose during the developmental phase however reflects the
Acknowledgements
This research was wholly funded by Burdett Trust for Nursing. The project was a collaboration between researchers from the University of Nottingham, employees of the Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust and members of Making Waves, Nottingham. Through their reflections on their own personal experiences of using mental health services, Making Waves provide service evaluation and contribute to the development of research, education and training. They can be contacted via their website: //www.makingwaves.org/
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