# 3.3 Understanding your role, responsibilities and accountability

The Practice Supervisor, Practice Assessor and Academic Assessor all have responsibility for assessing students, however, they all have different roles.

Throughout the assessment process the relationship between the student, Practice Supervisor and Practice Assessor is key. The differences between the role of the Practice Supervisor and Practice Assessor in relation to the supervision and assessment of students are described below:

The Practice Assessor

- The Practice Assessor collaborates with the Academic Assessor at relevant points of the programme.
- The Practice Assessor gathers feedback from the Practice Supervisor and any other Practice Assessors and relevant people in order to be assured about their decisions for assessment and progression.
- The Practice Assessor is not able to take on the role of Practice Supervisor at the same time as being a Practice Assessor, unless in exceptional circumstances like a prescribing programme where the Practice Assessor can also take on role of Practice Supervisor.
- The Practice Assessor is expected to appropriately raise and respond to concerns regarding student conduct, competence and achievement.

The Practice Supervisor

- The Practice Supervisor communicates with Practice Assessor and Academic Assessor to share their views on student achievement, underachievement or areas to continue to work on.
- The Practice Supervisor has current knowledge and experience of the area in which they are providing support, supervision and feedback.
- The Practice Supervisor serves as a role model for safe and effective practice in line with their code of practice.
- The Practice Supervisor will input to the student documentation with their views on student achievement.

Accountability is the principle that individuals and organisations are responsible for their actions and may be required to explain them to others (NMC, 2018a). The Practice Supervisor, Practice Assessor and Academic Assessor have a responsibility as part of The Code (NMC, 2018b) when making decisions to ensure they have the knowledge and skills to assess learners, and if not then to highlight what areas they need to develop as part of their own development plan.

## Activity 13

Think about your own experience of assessment from the perspective of being the assessor of another person and being assessed yourself. Give examples of the positive and negative experiences you can recall in the table below.

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| Assessor | Being assessed
Positive experience/s | (A text entry box would appear here, but your browser does not support it.) | (A text entry box would appear here, but your browser does not support it.)
Negative experience/s | (A text entry box would appear here, but your browser does not support it.) | (A text entry box would appear here, but your browser does not support it.)

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### Discussion

You will have your own experiences, but this is an example of the type of thing you need to capture:

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| Assessor | Being assessed
Positive experience/s | Being able to tell the student that they are progressing well and being able to give examples of where that was observed. | Feedback on areas where I could improve and how I could do it was carried out in a very supportive way. It was made very clear what I have to do, by when and where I could get the support.
Negative experience/s | Having to fail a student because they are not making the progress expected. | The areas where I needed to improve came as a shock, as this was the first time I heard that there was an issue with this area of my practice. The way I was spoken to when being told I had failed was carried out in a negative way that it upset me and made me feel a complete failure.

It is important to reflect and think about the last time you were assessed and how it made you feel. As this can help you consider how this may make a student feel when roles are reversed.

OpenLearn - Practice supervision and assessment in nursing
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