Personal Reflections from an education based Reviewer
When asked if I would write a reflective piece about my experience
as an reviewer I glanced at the calendar wondering if it was April
Fools day! But my arm was twisted so here it is.
My motivation for applying to be a reviewer stemmed from
experiences as an external examiner and adviser and from having
undertaken the QAA major review training. However, the main appeal
was that I felt the reviewer role would enable me to be better
informed about the changes in NMC Standards and the HLSP process
for monitoring and approval events, which would be very relevant to
my role in management of quality and standards within the
Department of Nursing. The Head of Department was supportive and
recognised the experience could be utilised and disseminated across
the Department, the Faculty of Health and the University as a
whole.
I undertook the two day training event in Leeds in November 2006,
which I found both helpful and challenging. I was introduced to the
reviewers handbook which I have since used to facilitate workshops
with staff in my own department. To date I have undertaken a
mixture of one and two day monitoring and approval events, in a
range of locations spanning from London, the midlands, the North
East of England and Northern Ireland. Focusing on the pre
registration mental health nursing programme and the mentor /
practice teacher / teacher programme has prevented me from feeling
overwhelmed by too many different programme standards and enhanced
my understanding in two specialist areas.
The gains from my role as a reviewer can be separated out into
personal development and organisational benefits. My background is
as a teacher, mental health nurse and psychological therapist and I
have particularly valued visiting others in these fields. It has
been especially rewarding to meet with students, lecturers and
practitioners, managers and mentors to see how they are approaching
the challenges facing us all linked with commissioning and service
redesign and restructuring. I have seen creative opportunities made
available to students in practice settings in a changing climate
and through development of new roles. I sensed the pressure on
staff attempting to meet national and local targets within
financial constraints. It was particularly helpful to observe some
contemporary approaches in areas that I am either directly involved
in or which are a priority in my own institution, namely service
user and carer involvement and inter-professional learning. At the
same time, I was aware of a need to focus my questions linked to
the pre review commentary so as to avoid being totally voyeuristic.
Fortunately this did not seem to hinder the opportunity to observe
good practice and see how mentors and managers created conducive
learning environments.
Since my reviewer training I have worked with course leaders and
course teams preparing them for monitoring and approval visits,
helping to ensure that evidence presented to reviewers is
accessible and clear in demonstrating the NMC standards. A further
benefit has been opportunity to observe other universities quality
assurance and validation processes. As a consequence, I have been
reassured that my own university’s internal procedures and systems
are favourable, robust and relevant.
The reviewer experience has also supported me in various roles
related to quality and academic standards including Chair of
validation events and Academic Standards Forums. Interestingly, the
Universities Academic Regulations sub-committee has recently
reviewed the regulation on Fitness to Practice and discussed the
relationship between the university regulations and professional
bodies. I have been able to draw upon my experiences as a reviewer
in contributing to this process.
Nigel Harrison,
Associate Head for Academic Functions, University of Central
Lancashire.
nharrison@uclan.ac.uk
To read about monitoring from another perspective,
click here
