Assignment: Local Health Librarians
Assignment: Local Health Librarians
Evidence of competence The NMC (2009) uses the term competence to describe the skills and ability to practice safely and effectively with- out the need for supervision – a reasonable expectation of the registered nurse made by both the professional body and the employer. Since the introduction of the Knowledge and Skills Framework (Department of Health, 2004), all NHS staff are expected to demonstrate appropriate skills and knowledge within their role. These are closely linked to pay and progression through the process of annual development reviews and personal development planning. It is therefore helpful for health professionals to be able to easily access evidence of competence as part of the review process. However, there has been debate as to the best way to assess competence and some recent work suggested that as there is no gold standard for assessing competence in nursing ‘…a multi-method approach to assessment is advis- able’ (National Nursing Research Unit, 2009.) Portfolios certainly constitute a multi-faceted way of presenting a range of evidence and as a focus for discussion as part of a performance development review. Local universities increasingly offer modules to support the development of portfolios for health professionals and a range of self-help literature and texts have been also been published on the topic. Local health librarians should be able to support practitioners in accessing these.
Portfolios and advanced nursing practice roles There are particular reasons why those nurses who undertake advanced clinical nursing roles, such as nurse practitioners, consultant nurses and community matrons, should maintain up-to-date professional portfolios. The autonomous nature of the work of nurses in advanced roles
means that they are less subject to the scrutiny of others. In addition, the sometimes fairly wide scope of their nursing practice, and potential overlap with medical practice, makes them vulnerable to questions regarding their competence and qualifications for their practice. It is important there- fore, that nurses in advanced roles should consider carefully how they currently evidence that their practice is safe and effective. Some suggestions for evidencing competence in advanced practice within a portfolio are: w Records of education and training in advanced skills such
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.
Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.
Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.
The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.
