National survey: Developing a common approach to grading of practice in pre-registration midwifery

Abstract

The research team would like to thank the members of the Lead Midwife for Education United Kingdom Executive (LME-UK) for their support as 'gatekeepers' to the survey and ongoing contributions throughout this national project. We are also grateful to all those midwifery and nursing colleagues and students who took the time to respond to the survey and test our proposed tools-adding valuable insights to the pool of evidence around assessment and grading of practice in the UK and beyond.

The Impact of Noise on Nursing Preceptors’ Assessment of Student Performance

“…To reduce this type of system noise, preceptors are encouraged to use the tools as they are designed, 4 ensuring that these absolute tools are applied absolutely, and removing the relative application that was described by participants. Another approach to minimize noise is the model whereby the student is supervised by different preceptors, and feedback logs are completed daily.…”

“…Clinical assessment tools must include clear and transparent assessment criteria 1 to minimize human factors that result in subjective and inconsistent results or bias. 4,5 While bias in student assessment is well recognized, noise in human judgment can have a significant impact on assessment outcomes but is an underexplored notion. 5 Bias describes an error in judgment that preferences one decision over another.…”

“…A range of clinical assessment tools are used nationally and internationally to assess student performance on clinical practicum. Clinical assessment tools must include clear and transparent assessment criteria1 to minimize human factors that result in subjective and inconsistent results or bias 4,5. While bias in student assessment is well recognized, noise in human judgment can have a significant impact on assessment outcomes but is an underexplored notion 5…”

Psychometric properties of a clinical assessment tool in the postgraduate midwifery programme, Botswana

“…By assessing reliability, we can estimate the impact of variation on the assessment scores (Mokkink et al 2019 ) and determine if the tool is able to assess and measure the midwifery skills and competencies needed to provide quality and holistic midwifery care (Helminen et al 2016 ; Löfmark & Mårtensson 2017 ). However, the reliability of these clinical assessment tools is not often addressed (Morrow et al 2016 ) and remains a major challenge in nursing and midwifery (Fisher et al 2019 ; Malakooti, Bahadoran & Ehsanpoor 2018 ; Ossenberg, Dalton & Henderson 2016 ). As a result, many nursing competency assessment tools were developed but only a few of these were evaluated for reliability (Wu et al 2016 ).…”