ASSESSMENT IN THE CLINICAL ENVIRONMENT

As mentioned by Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), mentorship is qualified midwife and nurse who are accountable for enabling performance evaluation, learning and making evidence for accomplishment or the non-achievement of mentee in a non-threatening way in the clinical environment (NMC, 2013). Mentors are the individual who gives instruction and advice to the student nurse and midwives and listens to their issues in order to focus on their professional development and skill enhancement. In the clinical environment, mentors play important roles in conducting supporting learning environment for the students. Through creating a dynamic learning experience, mentors can assist student nurse and midwives to develop their professions skills. Purpose of this assignment is to discuss the ways in which the mentor can facilitate the learning and assessment in the clinical environment.

According to Brockett and Hiemstra (2018) adult learning theory is not only associated with concepts, ideas and jargons, but also the theory explains entire course during the development, training conception and execution of students that facilitate the learning process. Principles of adult learning are mainly based on Roger's student-centred approach. In the clinical environment, mentors need to implement the five components in order to develop the adult learning process. The five components are self-involvement, self-initiation, behavioural and attitude-transformation, evaluation of learner and the essence. In the clinical environment, the mentor would assist the student nurses and midwives to involve them into theories own development and learning process (Merriam, 2018). Self-involvement and self-initiation are important that the mentors need to implement into their practice, in order to develop the professional and personal skills of student nurse and midwives. Moreover, through transforming the attitudes and behaviour of student nursed and midwives, mentors can improve the way in which student nurse would deal with service users.

Adult learning is completely different from the early year learning process, due to the different resource and techniques are used for the adult learning process. As stated by Merriam (2018), in the clinical environment, adult learners need to be involved in the evaluation and planning of their performances and activities. Moreover, mentors use the experience-based learning process in order to develop the skill and knowledge of students nurse and midwives. According to Brockett and Hiemstra (2018), experience-based learning process assists the adult learners in the clinical environment to learn from each experience and apply the previous understating in their practice to provide the better support and care to service users. Adult learning is problem centred as compared to the early year learning which is content oriented.

This theory is based on the observable behaviour of the individuals that have a potential impact on their activities and performance (Watson, 2017). This theory can be applied by the mentors in the learning process in the clinical environment. Mentors can make the behavioural transformation of student nurses and midwives through conducting the positive and negative behavioural transformation. Classical and operation condition focus on the concept of negative and positive reinforcement in the learning process. In clinical environment, the mentor needs to motivate, encourage the student nurse and midwives in order to offer them positive reinforcement which would trigger the positive transformation of behaviour and attitude. On the other hand, students who get continuous punishment, abusive words from their mentors, would develop the negative behavioural transformation such as depression, anxiety, failure in the examination and poor remembering ability.

There are different types of learning styles that mentors can apply to the learning process in order to provide the proper learning opportunities to the student nurse and midwives. In clinical environment, three major types of learning styles can be implemented by the mentors such as VAK learning style; Kolb’s learning style and Meyer’s Briggs (MBTI). Visual, Auditory, Kinaesthetic (VAK) learning style assists mentors in the clinical environment to determine and evaluate the learner’s needs (Truong, 2016). These learning styles help mentor apply three different types of learning styles based on the needs of student nurse and midwives. In visual learning styles, learner tries to make sense of their surrounding things through their language and visual ability. In this learning, process mentor would use the proper body language and facial expression in order to highlight the different learning aspects to the learners. Moreover, mentor highlights the important points in texts and uses the recordings to assist the learner to learn about glossary, indexes and appendices. In this auditory learning process, mentors would ensure that student can clearly hear and understand their voice.

Mentors face difficulties in applying this VAK learning style, while there are students with different needs (Balakrishnan and Gan 2016). In these aspects, it is difficult for the mentor to use VAK learning styles at a time for different students in order to meet their learning needs. Moreover, VAK learning styles does not suit for all type of people. For example, in the case of the student nurses who do not have any disabilities mentors cannot apply the three above-mentioned styles of VAK learning process. As stated by Cheng and Chau (2016), an active learning process is associated with involving students more in performance and activities rather than listening and lectures. In the clinical environment, the active learning process is one of eth most important process that assists mentors to involve the student nurse and midwives into the debate, dialogue, writing, problem-solving and critical thinking process. Active learning in the clinical environment helps the student nurse and midwives to get the higher achievement, healthier psychological adjustments and positive relationships among them.

Reflection is processed to evaluate own skills, knowledge and qualities in order to determine the strength and weakness of the individuals. Mentors use the active learning process in order to involve student nursed in their self-reflection process. Through using active learning process mentors can involve the student nurse in determining their strength and abilities in order to deal with the challenging task. There are four types of active learning process such as simple task, complex task, collaborative learning and cooperative learning. In Simple task, mentors use small exercise and little advance planning for the learning process (Balakrishnan and Gan 2016). This type of active learning is conducted by the mentors in the clinical environment in the initial period of learning. Through conducting concept mapping, minute paper, and sharing ideas, mentors emphasise on understand the skill, knowledge, strength and weakness of each student. Complex task focuses on the long duration learning and development process that mentors use in clinical filed, to involve the student nurse and midwives into a challenging task (Heitink et al. 2016).

Assessment is the process of collecting, interpreting and evaluating information of student's responses (Truong, 2016). Assessment of mentee (student nurses and midwives) is crucial in the clinical environment due to measuring their performance and determining their strength and weakness in order to promote their skill their development. Reliability is the degree which measures whether the assessment process is able to produce a stable and consistent result. In the clinical environment, three major aspects are associated with the assessment process in order to maintain the degree of reliability of the results. The three aspects are consistency, dependability and stability (Balakrishnan and Gan 2016). In order to conduct the successful assessment of student nurse and midwives, mentors should ensure that the result of assessment process would be stable and consistent, and it would remain unchanged while the further test is conducted by using the similar constructs.

Assessment is important in building a strong relationship between the student and mentors. In the clinical environment, mentors use the summative and formative assessment process in order to analyse the strength, weakness and skill of students nurse (Baas et al. 2015). This assists mentors to know their student very well and set the relevant strategies in order to meet their learning needs. Thus assessment process enhances the transparency of student mentors relationship, which is associated with a strong partnership and collaborative working. Mentor assist the student nurse and midwives to make their self-evaluation in order to develop their own understand regarding the needs and areas of improvement. Planning is one of the important processes of assessment in which mentors set proper plan and strategies benefit staring the assessment (Wiliam and Thompson, 2017). There are two major types, of assessment process formative assessment and summative assessment. According to Papastavrou et al. (2016), formative assessment includes the diagnostic tests that are conducted by the mentors during the learning process. Mentors in the clinical environment use this formative assessment process in order to develop student’s strength, skills and knowledge. Moreover through using this assessment process mentors assist the student nurse and midwives to identify their weakness. Summative assessment is the terminal course or module appraisal process that is based on the overall judgement of student ability (Baas et al. 2015). Mentors conduct the summative assessment process at the end of the learning program. In the clinical environment, mentors use this summative assessment process to identify whether the course or module is helpful for the student nurse and midwives t to develop skill and knowledge.

Sometimes, a mentor can face some challenging circumstance in order to make a realisable assessment of students in the clinical environment. One of the most common challenges in this context is Halo effect, on which mentors can show the judgemental discrepancies and cognitive bias while conducting an assessment of students (Baas et al. 2015). In this aspect, mentors conduct the overall assessment of student based on ambiguous thought or information. This halo effect interferes with the reliability and stability of the assessment outcomes. There are three feedback processes in the learning and assessment system. The feedback is effective, descriptive, evaluative, 360 degree and motivational. Mentors use the effective feedback process to assist the students in order to use innovative strategies for dealing with future work (Papastavrou et al. 2016). Here mentors allow the student nurse and midwives to redo their work and understand the areas of improvement. Descriptive feedback process, mentor assists the student nurses about how to develop their skill and knowledge in order to move forward in the learning process (Baas et al. 2015). In the case of the evaluative feedback process, mentor uses to grade and score to measure the student achievements. This feedback process is intended to summarise the student achievement. In the clinical environment, mentors are accountable for conducting useful learning and assessment process in order to develop skill and knowledge of the student nurse and midwives (Papastavrou et al. 2016). Through conducting a proper assessment process and facilitating useful learning, mentors evaluate the strength and weakness of student nurse and midwives. As stated by Vinales (2015), mentors also focus on building a positive learning culture in order to encourage student for their own involvement in the learning and assessment process. By using appropriate learning styles such as VAK learning style and Kolb's learning style, mentor focus on the student needs and set strategies to meet them (Papastavrou et al. 2016). Through applying useful feedback process, mentors evaluate the usefulness of the overall learning process in order to develop skill and knowledge of the students.

From the above-mentioned discussion, it can be concluded that, in the clinical field, mentors are qualified and high-skilled nurse and midwives who are accountable for evaluating the performance of the student nurse and midwives in order to develop their personal and professional skill. Moreover, this assignment also concludes that the overall mentorship is associated with two major processes such as facilitation of learning and assessment of the student response.

For the mentors, it can be recommended that they should focus on setting proper strategies before starting the learning and assessment process. Moreover, it is also recommended to the mentors working in the clinical environment, that they should use the authentic and reliable sources of information in order to assess the strength and wellness of student nurse and midwives. Moreover, the feedback process after the completion of the learning and assessment program would be free from partiality and bias in order to promote reliable outcomes.

Being a mentor in clinical filed, I use the constructive feedback process which assists me to get the valid and authentic outcomes about the student strength and weakness through this feedback process I am able to motivate student nurse and midwives in order to use their own skill to achieve the task. Moreover, constructive feedback also assists me to understand the areas of improvement and learning needs of each student nurse, thereby assisting me to use the innovative learning and assessment strategies in future for gaining the better result.

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