Your local point of contact for UoPort is the is Practice Placement Coordinator (PPC)
– Marie Knowles
Practice Educators
Awaiting documents
Passing your knowledge and skills to a learner is one of the most essential roles you can undertake. As a mentor you are an essential piece of the collaborative jigsaw when supporting the development of health care professionals for the future. You have the privileged position and responsibility for helping students translate theory into practice, and making what is learned in the classroom a reality ensuring the student is fit for practice.
The importance of your mentoring role and the quality of the mentorship you offer in practice can never be over emphasised; Providing the learning experiences in the clinical setting ensures that the paramedics of the future are fit for practice and purpose. Mentors are key to supporting students in practice, to apply their knowledge, learn key skills and achieve the required competencies for successful registration with the Health & Care Professions Council.
Mentoring involved activities that promote and enhance effective transitions between professional roles, including:
- Identifying learning goals and supporting progression;
- Developing increasing students’ control over their learning;
- Active listening;
- Modelling, observing, articulating and discussing practice to raise awareness;
- Shared learning experiences e.g. via observation;
- Providing guidance, feedback and, when necessary, direction;
- Encouragement of self-assessment and reflection on learning;
- Review and action planning;
- Assessing, appraising and accrediting practice;
- Ensure any assessment is valid and reliable, and that their performance is recorded and meets the standards required in the documentation;
- Brokering a range of support.
There are 3 different options for Mentorship courses-
Option 1 – Online- distance learning – (non-accredited / non-credit bearing – sometimes called NCB)
- This is available via UWE free of charge.
- This course is suitable for all NQPs & meets the HCPC/ NMC criteria.
- This course is suitable for all Practice Educators taking all students
Please use the swastcpd link HERE – This means we can keep track accurately on who has completed the course. If you go direct to the UWE website, your course will not be recorded with SWAST
*An online SWAST course is coming soon as well. This will meet all the same requirements & be free of charge
Option 2 – Face to Face / taught course – Accredited option only – UoP Mentorship module – (UoP info here) Level 6 -15 credits
- This course is accredited by UoP & delivered by a SWAST Tutor. (It is only available at L6 as that is what we are accredited for).
- This is available via SWAST free of charge- it does however cost SWAST approx. £250 per person. If you fail to submit or withdraw – you will be charged as the T&Cs
- This course involves mandatory attendance for 4 days, normally spaced over several weeks, you can find this course in the HE modules section of the website. We normally run 3 courses a year.
- This course is suitable for all NQPs & meets the HCPC/ NMC criteria.
- This course is suitable for all Practice Educators taking all students
Option 3 – Face to Face / taught course – Accredited option only -UoP Supervision of Clinical Practice module – (UoP info here) Level 6 -15 credits
- This 20 credit degree-level module is aimed at all professional healthcare workers – it can be used in place of a Mentorship module for NQPs & Practice Educators but is more suited to staff in supervisory roles. We would recommend this module for L&D staff PPEDs, OOs, LPs- or those staff aspiring to these roles or similar.
- This course is accredited by UoP & delivered by a SWAST Tutor. (It is only available at L6 as that is what we are accredited for).
- This is available via SWAST free of charge- it does however cost SWAST approx. £250 per person. If you fail to submit or withdraw – you will be charged as the T&Cs
- This course involves mandatory attendance for 6 days, normally spaced over several weeks, you can find this course in the HE modules section of the website. We normally run 3 courses a year.
- This course is suitable for all NQPs & meets the HCPC/ NMC criteria.
- This course is suitable for all Practice Educators taking all students
These are useful links to HCPC documentation that take you through to the relevant sections of HCPC standards that both Students and Practice Educators should be familiar with
These links will only work from a Trust device as they go direct to the Intranet
*They aren’t available as downloads on here, as they may be superseded by policy updates via the intranet & we don’t want you working off out of date documents
CPD modules from Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) are mainly drawn from Health & Care Degree (BSc) or Masters (MSc) programmes. The programmes are made up of modular courses that add together to give enough credits to claim the award at the end.
Click the image below to see a Higher Education Qualification credit map
They are sometimes offered as a CPD module so people can either study a particular subject they are interested in as a standalone subject, or people can ‘module gather’ at their own pace and claim a generic award when they have enough credits. (If you don’t complete all the specific modules specified for a Programme, you cannot claim that award, but you can claim a generic award). e.g. You could complete a mix of modules from a Nursing degree and a Paramedic science degree; with enough credits then claim a Health & Social Care BSc. But you would need to complete the compulsory modules listed in the Nursing / Paramedic Science degree , and complete the placement to claim the specific degree. You would still have a valid BSc, just not in that specific subject, (and you would not be able to register as a professional in that field).
When it comes to a Masters pathway or programme, you have entered the realm of the Post Graduate. This can be different at different HEIs. Some will allow you to start a MSc pathway without a BSc, other will require you to have completed a BSc.
You can use a proportion of BSc credits towards a post graduate qualification, but you will need mainly MSc credits. This will depend on the HEI and the pathway.
Once you begin on a Post graduate (PG) pathway, you can ‘cash in’ your credits and ‘step off’ the pathway at certain points. You can stop and claim a Post Graduate Certificate (PG Cert), then a Post Graduate Diploma (PG Dip), and then finally a full Masters award (MSc).
Then, if you still have a family life and any sanity left, you can start looking at a Post Graduate Doctorate (PHd).