The necessity for consumer involvement in higher education is wide spread amongst various disciplines due to the current drive for Universities to produce graduates who meet the expectations and requirements of employers and their customers. This drive is particularly influential within the health care system whereby consumer involvement in the planning, delivery and evaluation of health care services is high on the political agenda and also spans into the stratum of nurse education in the form of teaching and assessment. In the context of this piece of research, consumer refers to the person receiving mental health services (also know as patient, service user or client).

Despite the political drive for consumer involvement in the assessment of health care professionals there is currently no contemporary research or policy recommendations on how this might be implemented in practice. This project attempted to inform this development by exploring mental health nursing student’s and qualified mental health nurse’s attitudes towards the prospect of introducing consumer involvement in student assessment into the mainstream curriculum.

Ethical approval to conduct the study was granted from the National Research Ethics Service and Nottinghamshire Mental Health Care Trust. The project employed focus groups as a data collection technique which aimed to give insight into how people collectively make sense of the concept and construct meaning around it. Two focus groups were conducted with five mental health nurses working in two different in-patient settings. One focus group was conducted with eight students on the mental health branch of the undergraduate diploma of nursing programme. Written consent was obtained from all participants. An opportunistic sampling technique was employed whereby students who were in school on the proposed date were invited to take part via an email. Similarly the mental health nurses who were on shift and available at the time of the focus group were invited to attend.

The recordings of the data collected were transcribed and analysed to draw out attitudes towards consumer involvement in assessment, potential issues to be considered and recommendations for implementation. The findings indicated that the students and mental health nurses shared a number of common views regarding both the positive and negative impact they felt it may have. Firstly the integration of consumer involvement into the assessment of students in practice appears to be favoured by mental health nurses and students in principle. However the findings of this project highlighted the potential for students’ to experience a sense of vulnerability when posed with the prospect of receiving negative feedback from consumers. Furthermore both mental health nurses and students were concerned about the negative effect this may have on the student’s confidence. This concern appeared to pose the risk of reinforcing rather than challenging the role and status distinctions between student nurses and consumers. For example negative feedback may be dismissed by the student as a consequence of the consumer’s mental health problem.

There is potential for consumer assessment of student nurses in practice. However, the identified tensions would need to be carefully considered prior to implementation. The groups gave a number of suggestions regarding their perception of the most effective way to implement this development. These suggestions have informed the design of an externally funded pilot study which will involve the implementation of consumer assessment and the evaluation of the perspectives of individuals involved in order to explore the feasibility of integrating consumer involvement into the mainstream curriculum.