91Pro

Once you have offered a student a placement, the relevant Placement Manger (Year One Placement Manager Suzanne Edwards or Sandwich Year Placement Manager Caroline Bromley) will contact you to confirm this offer. At this time, they will also provide you with another overview of placement requirements so that all parties can double check that they are happy to commit to the placement. This is usually done via e-mail.

The Practice will be asked to sign our Memorandum of Agreement (see Documents) which outlines what the Practice can expect from 91Pro, and what we in turn expect from the Practice.

If we are not your primary affiliated centre, meaning your TP number does NOT start with 8060, we are obliged to contact your affiliated centre to check they have no objections to our student completing placement with the practice. It is rare for any centre to object, but should this occur, we would of course liaise with you immediately and work with you and your centre to try and resolve the matter.

The practice will then be allocated a member of our clinical placement team to provide quality assurance and support for them and our student. Their official title is an Internal Quality Assurance verifier or IQAV for short. In line with RCVS requirements, all our clinical placement team are Registered Veterinary Nurses, (RVNs) and hold an internal quality assurance qualification. We are hugely fortunate to have a highly experienced team with years of experience in supporting students under their belts.

If we have worked with the practice before, we will always aim for this person to be the same as we appreciate the benefits of continuity.

If we have not worked with the practice in the last 12-18 months, your allocated IQAV will aim to undertake a pre-placement visit before your student starts. This gives them the opportunity to get to know the practice and clinical coach, as well as to complete the necessary health and safety checks and ensure you are happy with everything about your students placement. (If the practice is affiliated to 91Pro, you will have annual TP re-approval visits so a pre-placement visit is unlikely to be necessary. However, if you would like one, please contact us).

The RCVS require us to have the following documentation for clinical coaches supporting our students, so at some point prior to the student starting, we will ask the clinical coach to provide the following:

• An up to date CV.
• A CPD record for the previous 12-24 months.
• A copy of their clinical coach/supervisor certificate.
• Evidence of attendance at a clinical coach meeting in the last 12 months.

In addition, all clinical coaches are asked to sign our Terms of Reference (see Documents) which set out what is required of clinical coaches supporting our students, and what they in turn can expect from 91Pro. 

Once we have the above information, we can then set up the clinical coach with access to the Nursing Progress Log and connect them to the student.

Closer to the start date of your student’s placement, the relevant Placement Manager will e-mail the clinical coach to advise/check:

• The placement preparation that has been undertaken at University including a video tour of the clinical placement resources that students have available to them through the University’s virtual learning environment, (VLE).
• If your student has disclosed any condition to us that we believe may have the potential to impact on placement, we will inform you of this and advise of any reasonable adjustments or additional support that may be required.
• Ensure that you have your NPL login details.
• Ensure you have access to our Placement Platform via the University’s website which contains all our placement information, resources and contacts. This also includes handy checklists for clinical coaches to help them with getting started with their student, as well as things to check prior to the end of a student's placement.

The relevant placement manager will e-mail you on your student's first day of placement to say hello and reiterate the support available should you require this.

In determining the level of support needed by a practice during clinical placement, the IQAV will assess the support needs of the student, clinical coach and practice. As you would expect, an increased level of support will be put in place where additional support is needed. Examples may include where a clinical coach is new to the role, or where a student is experiencing difficulties.

The team are always on hand to provide support and guidance; we aim to respond to you within a maximum of 48 hours. On occasions when your IQAV is not available, for example, if they are on holiday, their e-mail or voicemail will direct you to another member of our team.

As a general guide, if a student is undertaking clinical placement in a well-established TP that we know well, and that has a very experienced clinical coach and the student is confident in their role, you should expect the following support:

• A phone call/e-mail to the student and the clinical coach a few weeks into the placement to see how everything is going, and if there are any queries or worries at this time.
• An informal NPL check 2-3 weeks into placement to see if the student has begun to log any NPL experiences, and if so, if they need any guidance relating to how they are logging or making reflective comments.
• One monitoring visit (usually about 5-8 weeks into placement). This may be completed on site or virtually.
• A formal NPL report detailing progress towards the RCVS day one skills, and any actions required (usually around week 8/9 of placement).

Those with increased support needs will receive additional monitoring and support in line with the specific areas of concern. 

As a general guide, if a student is undertaking clinical placement in a well-established TP that we know well, and that has a very experienced clinical coach and the student is confident in their role, you should expect the following support:

• A phone call/e-mail to the student and the clinical coach a few weeks into the placement to see how everything is going, and if there are any queries or worries at this time.
• An informal NPL check 2-3 weeks into placement to see if the student has begun to log any NPL experiences, and if so, if they need any guidance relating to how they are logging or making reflective comments.
• Two visits during their sandwich year. These may be completed on site or virtually.
• Two NPL monitoring reports to check and assess progress towards completion of the RCVS day one skills.

Those with increased support needs will receive additional monitoring and support in line with the specific areas of concern. 

In quality assuring the NPL, your allocated internal quality assurance verifier (IQAV) will look at the following:

• How tasks are being opened, e.g. is quick start being used appropriately
• The experiences and reflective comments students are logging
• Clinical coach comments upon declaring students competent/not competent
• Any relevant task guidance and whether this has been met upon a student being declared competent
• The length of time taken between a student declaring competence and competence being confirmed (or denied) by the clinical coach.
• If/how actions from previous NPL reports have been addressed.

IQAVs will provide clinical coaches and students with written reports about progress. These are usually uploaded to the communications tab on the NPL. Clinical coaches and students are then e-mailed to advise them a report has been done and is waiting for them.

The report will contain an overview of the student’s progress across all units in a table format, and is then followed by specific sampling of various units/tasks. The IQAV will detail any help and guidance to assist with future NPL work, along with any actions required based on the sample undertaken.

IQAVs will sample tasks that are ‘in progress’ and those deemed ‘complete’.

There is a function on the NPL that allows the QAV to highlight that a task has been sampled and whether it is satisfactory or not. We ONLY use this function when we are sampling tasks you have signed off as complete.

NPL reports will contain detail of all tasks sampled, but we did not deem it appropriate to use the above function to sample a task in progress as the QAV would automatically have to deem this as ‘unsatisfactory’ simply because it was not yet complete. This would be confusing for clinical coaches, hence the decision was made to only apply this function to completed tasks.

Following completion of a placement, we will seek your feedback on your experience of working with 91Pro to continually review and improve our support processes.