Online Mentor Update

Ongoing Achievement Record

The NMC 2008 Standards introduce the use of a continuous assessment record for pre-registration students. These have been in use since September 2007 and are now called the Ongoing Achievement Record (OAR). They have also been known as student passports and continuous practice assessment records (CPAR) in the short time they have been around! We are hoping to stick with the use of Ongoing Achievement Record – OAR, for the future as long as we don't have any further changes on this from the NMC!

The OAR document is carried by the student through all their practice areas during their course and becomes a record of all their mentor decisions and achievements of all their outcomes and proficiencies in practice. It has meant that mentors can now see how the student has performed and achieved in previous placement areas and offers continuity in assessment we have not previously had. The OAR should help to support mentors and increase the quality of assessment of practice learning. The document contains all of the carbon assessment sheets students have completed throughout all placements for their whole course. Mentors need to ensure they review past assessment sheets at the beginning of the student placement to see if there are any issues or outstanding outcomes/proficiencies the student needs to achieve. The NMC stipulate this should occur within 5 days of the start of placement (NMC Circular 33/2007).

They should then record these in the initial interview record which is kept in the Assessment of Practice Record (APR) – which is an individual set of records for each student for each placement area which changes as they progress through the course. For non-branch placements which students undertake in their first year, they only need to achieve each outcome once across all non-branch placements as stated in the APR. Adult branch students in semester 5, Year 3 only need to complete their proficiencies once in two placements. For all other placements students would achieve all of the listed outcomes/proficiencies in each placement.

During the placement the mentor should review the evidence presented by the student and ensure achievement of outcomes and proficiencies are noted and evidence is signed by the mentor. The intermediate interview halfway through the placement should be an opportunity to review progress so far and give feedback to the student. This feedback should also be recorded in the Assessment of Practice Record (APR) on the intermediate interview page.

At the end of the placement the mentor and student should have a final interview where all evidence not previously assessed in this placement is reviewed, assessed and signed by the mentor. The carbon assessment sheets in the OAR for this placement should then be completed. These consist of "assessment results" a record of outcomes/proficiencies achieved, an action plan, outcomes/proficiencies not achieved and a "record of professional progress" where the mentor comments on the students approach and attitude whilst on placement. These 2 forms are all carbon sheets in the OAR. The mentor should not remove any of the copies, they should stay in the OAR until the student submits the document to their personal tutor for review at the end of each semester. The yellow carbon copy is removed at this point by the tutor and filed in the student records. The white copy stays in the OAR.

Use of this document means that for the first time mentors will see feedback from previous placement. You therefore need to write clear constructive feedback for the students to help them and their future mentor to identify areas of strength and any weakness they need to work on in future placements. If outcomes are not achieved you need to clearly state why and guidance for this is on the documentation.

From January 2010 there is a change to the look of the OAR following feedback from mentors. The OAR will no longer be branch specific – instead it has sufficient pages for all the branches to be able to use it successfully and it has a clearer one page guide on how to complete the documentation. Mentors will still be required to enter the Bondy level of achievement for each outcome or standard of proficiency but they are only expected to sign once for each NMC domain, reducing the total number of signatures to four. There are spare sets of documentation at the end of the OAR for a student to use if required, to repeat a placement or complete any additional evidence of professional progress e.g.: adult students on their Mother and Baby placement (Lesley Strouther, Mentor's Newsletter, Issue 18, Spring 2010).