National ‘Grading of Practice in Pre-registration Midwifery’ project

A national study which has been undertaken by and on behalf of the Lead Midwife for Education United Kingdom Executive
National ‘Grading of Practice in Pre-registration Midwifery’ project

Project background and publications

The ‘Grading of Practice in Pre-registration Midwifery’ project is a national study which has been undertaken by and on behalf of the Lead Midwife for Education United Kingdom Executive (LME-UK) – a group of experienced midwives representing the Approved Education Institutions in the UK which deliver midwifery programmes leading to Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) registration. 
The project has sought to identify and remedy some of the variations in applying the current NMC standards for pre-registration midwifery education (2009) to programmes across the Approved Education Institutions, with the aim of achieving greater consistency in the assessment of practice both now and in the future. Our work is contributing to the evidence-base informing the new NMC standards.
The research project is now complete. Over its five-year span, it comprised three phases, all of which have been published in the journal ‘Nurse Education in Practice’.
An article explaining the background to the 'Practice Assessment Toolkit' has also been published: 
Report on phase three
The full report on the third and final phase is on the tab below; please cite it as follows:
Fisher, M., Bower, H., Chenery-Morris, S., Galloway, F., Jackson, J., Way, S., Fisher, M.M., 2018. National Grading of Practice in Pre-registration Midwifery Project: Report on final phase on-line survey (Phase 3). United Kingdom: LME-UK Executive. [Online], Available: Final report on phase 3 grading of practice project  
Practice Assessment Toolkit
A ‘Practice Assessment Toolkit’ has been developed from the project. This links closely to the newly published NMC (2018) ‘Standards framework for Nursing and Midwifery education’ and ‘Standards for student supervision and assessment’. The Practice Assessment Toolkit is designed to be used flexibly for graded or non-graded practice assessment. The third phase national survey identified that the tools we developed would be particularly useful:
  • in conjunction with existing practice assessment tools
  • when developing practice assessment documentation for new programmes
  • when writing evidence to record students’ progress
  • for students writing learning objectives or self-assessing their progress
  • to aid assessors in objectively determining levels of performance and achievement in practice.
To facilitate flexible use of the assessment tools we developed, separate Word documents have also been provided of the ‘ WordlesPractice Assessment Toolkit ’, ‘ Lexicon Frameworks ’ and ‘ Rubrics Practice Assessment Toolkit Fisher ’. Please feel free to use these, acknowledging the source:
Fisher, M., Bower, H., Chenery-Morris, S., Galloway, F., Jackson, J., Way, S., 2019. Practice Assessment Toolkit. National ‘Grading of Practice in Pre-registration Midwifery’ Project. [Online], Available: https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/research/national-grading-of-practice-in-pre-registration-midwifery-project
Contact
If you would like further information about our project, please contact the Principal Investigator, Margaret Fisher on mfisher@plymouth.ac.uk or telephone +447815527989.
Other project team members are: