A higher education institution's response to the NMC Standards for Student Supervision and Assessment

In 2018, the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) launched its national Standards Framework for Nursing and Midwifery Education (NMC, 2018a). This prompted a suspension of the traditional model of mentorship in nursing and midwifery practice placements, and identified new roles to support students in academic and practice environments. The supplementary guidance, Part 2: Standards for Student Supervision and Assessment (SSSA), triggered a paradigm shift in the way individual students are supported in practice.

The traditional mentorship model, where one ‘sign-off mentor’ supports a given student for at least 40% of their placement time (NMC, 2008) was dissolved, with the vision that teaching and assessing students in their clinical practice placements became much more of a collaborative process between the newly identified roles of practice supervisor (PS), academic assessor (AA) and practice assessor (PA).

Perhaps the most significant modification brought about by the new standards is the preparation requirements for PSs and PAs. As opposed to the more prescriptive requirements, which specified prerequisite credit and non-credit bearing programmes to prepare qualified clinicians for the mentorship role, the SSSA (NMC, 2018b) delivers a more creative and flexible approach, stating PAs require ongoing support, sufficient time to develop and perform their role, whilst undertaking training as required.