# 3.4 The strategies utilised for assessment in clinical practice

Assessment should be continuous throughout the time in which a Practice Supervisor/Practice Assessor is assigned to a student. Students are assessed for a range of reasons: to ensure the safety of service users, to ensure they know how to perform certain skills and to support learning.

Assessment needs to be designed so that students understand their progress towards course goals and can respond appropriately in order to meet those goals. For this reason, frequent assessment, accompanied with appropriate feedback is critical. Assessment is only as good as the feedback that accompanies it. In order to make assessment as effective as possible, feedback from the Practice Supervisor/Practice Assessor on the student’s performance is required. Feedback will be covered in more detail in Section 4.2.

## Activity 14

Reflect on the learning opportunities available in your clinical area/accessible outside of your direct clinical area by adding your thoughts to the table below.

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Learning opportunities for students in my clinical area | Learning opportunities for students available outside of my direct clinical area
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### Discussion

There are many opportunities for students that can be accessed within and outside of your direct clinical area which can provide the student with rich learning opportunities. It does take time to understand where these opportunities are and getting to know the right people to connect with. A Practice Supervisor/Practice Assessor can make these connections in order to facilitate student learning which will make the student experience much more rewarding.

OpenLearn - Practice supervision and assessment in nursing
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