Clinical Placement Reporting Tool

Commendations are opportunities for students and placement staff to recognise excellent performance and outstanding contributions to patient care or the placement learning environment. Students can leave Commendations for staff, and staff can leave Commendations for students.

We suggest that Commendations should be left for:

• Outstanding professionalism and/or concern for patient safety
• Role-modelling behaviours outlined by your professional or regulatory body
• Displaying attention to patient needs / patient-centred care
• Demonstrating pastoral concern for other members of the team
• Excellent teaching / engagement with educational opportunities
• Making a particularly strong contribution to a conducive learning environment
• Going above and beyond expectations in any capacity
• Any other positive behaviour or approaches that you or the student wish to highlight

There is no ‘bar’ that needs to be passed in order for something to justify a Commendation, and there may be relatively minor interactions which nonetheless demonstrate the kind of mindset or attitude that we would hope to see of our students or educators.

Commendations are an incredibly valuable source of feedback for students, placement staff, and the School. For students and placement staff, hearing positive feedback and encouragement from the individuals they work with is extremely powerful. It lets them know that what they are doing is valued, that it has made a difference to the people they have worked with, and it helps to boost their confidence.

We appreciate that finding the time to access the system and leave a report for a student can be difficult given the other pressures you may be under in your role. At the same time, we would deeply appreciate you leaving Commendations for students if you are able; the difference that they can make to individuals developing their confidence and knowledge can be transformative.

Any member of staff at a placement provider can leave Commendations, or can have Commendations left for them by the students. We appreciate that there are a great number of staff who will interact with our students and who will directly and indirectly contribute to their education. As a result, you do not need to have an educational role or responsibility to submit a Commendation for a student.

We also strongly encourage students to recognise the importance of the full spectrum of roles involved in delivering excellent placements and superb patient care. As a result, we emphasise to our students that they can leave Commendations for any staff member in any role.

Leaving a Commendation should only take a few minutes. Once you press the relevant button on this website, you will be asked for some personal details to identify you, the details of the individuals you are leaving a commendation for, and then a short summary of what you would like to tell us.

After submitting the Commendation, you will receive an email confirmation of your submission.

If you have supplied an email address, the individual will receive your Commendation instantly. If you do not have the student’s email address to hand, you can still submit the Commendation, though there will be a delay as we manually identify the student and pass your message to them.

Please be aware that the individual that you leave feedback for will also be informed who has submitted a Commendation. The feedback you provide will be shared without editing by School staff, so anything you write will be seen by the individual that you name.

When a student leaves a Commendation for you, you will receive a copy of their feedback instantly if they have supplied your email address.

We regularly share all Commendations with the relevant placement provider, and if a student has not included you email address, your employer will forward your Commendations after they have received them from the School.

You Commendations will be seen by a handful of School staff who are responsible for managing placement quality, and the Programme / Year Leads associated with your placement. Your Commendations will be shared with your employer, but the exact individuals who will see these will vary between providers.

You are under no obligation to leave Commendations, and should not be put under any pressure to do so by students. In turn, we would ask that you do not directly ask for Commendations and allow the School to take the role of reminding students about this option.

Concerns allow students and placement staff to highlight worries or issues they may have about things that they have seen or experienced during placements. Specifically, Concerns are intended to capture problems with behaviour, patient care, patient safety, professional standards, and the way that placement staff and students interact with one another.

You should raise a concern using the CPRT if you see or experience:

• Concerns about patient safety (though these must be raised within the Trust immediately, before being highlighted to the School)
• Issues with professionalism
• Bullying, harassment, or unfair treatment
• Racism, sexism, or other forms of discrimination
• Refusal to allow / or to engage with educational opportunities
• Other behaviour that may jeopardise the delivery of safe and equitable healthcare or impacts on the maintenance of a supportive and effective learning environment

It is important to note that the CPRT Concerns process is not about the quality of placements overall (how good our students feel the teaching is, how well-prepared you feel our students are). These issues can be highlighted in other ways to the School.

Concerns are important to ensure that the proper standards are being maintained by students and placement staff. If individuals engage in behaviour contrary to their professional standards, the principles of the NHS, or the School’s expectations, we need to know in order to take appropriate action.

While it is important that we act on anything that might jeopardise standards of patient care or patient safety , it is also important that we hear about more minor slips in standards. Our students will be the NHS staff of the future, and it is important that we make early interventions to correct any issues with their behaviour or professionalism.

Any member of placement staff can be left a Concern by a student. In turn, any member of staff at a placement can leave a Concern for a student.

When you use the ‘submit a Concern’ link on this page, you will be asked for your details, the details of the individual you are reporting, and a summary of what happened.

After submission, you will receive an email acknowledging receipt. Your report will be sent to the Programme or Year Lead responsible for the student, who will then review your submission.

In serious cases, the Programme / Year Lead may contact you for further information or to clarify details, but in many cases we will be able to proceed without further contact.

We will then consult with other School colleagues to understand any further context in regards to the student or their behaviour, and will then speak directly to the student. The outcome from this discussion will vary depending on the exact circumstances you have alerted us to. For minor issues, we may give the student a warning or refer them to further training. For more serious reports, we may refer the student to other School functions such as the Health & Conduct Committee.

You will receive an email when we have closed the report, which will also highlight any actions that we have taken.

When a student submits a Concern, it will be sent to the Programme / Year Lead responsible for that student. The Programme / Year Lead will review the report, and in cases where it has been submitted erroneously or where it is the wrong issue for the CPRT, the report will be closed.

In all other cases, the Programme / Year Lead will meet with the student to gain some further details and context to their report. This is to ensure that we are acting with all of the possible information before proceeding. It also allows some students to close their Concern early, particularly if the Programme / Year lead are able to clarify any misunderstandings that they may have had.

Once we have spoken to the student and gathered all evidence available to us, we will contact either you or your employer. The School staff processing Concerns have considerable freedom in how to approach these situations, and the priority will be ensuring that issues are raised and escalated to the appropriate level.

For very minor Concerns, we may contact you directly, believing that a direct conversation may be the easiest way to understand what happened and take any necessary steps. For other matters we may raise the Concern with your manager and work with both of you to explore the report. In the most serious of circumstances, we will raise the Concern with the Director of Student Education or other equivalent senior staff member.

If we speak to your manager or other senior staff member, we may ask them to investigate a Concern locally. They are likely to speak to you to understand your perspective, and to any other staff member who may have been present or have knowledge of the situation in question. We intend for this process to be as quick and as discreet as possible.

The outcome of this process will vary enormously depending on the nature of the report and your response. The School does not intend this to be an adversarial process, but a constructive conversation that can suggest places for improvement and find relevant training or support. It may also be an occasion to reflect on the student’s understanding if their Concern has been raised as an honest misapprehension of a given situation.

The emphasis at all times will be on mutual respect of all the parties involved. The School will approach each situation neutrally, and with the aim of ensuring that our students and placement staff feel safe and supported in their learning environment.

When the conversation / process has concluded we will report back to the student.

The Concern may be accessed by an extremely small number of School staff with access to the CPRT. The Concern will be handled by the Programme / Year Lead responsible for the student, and will not be shared with any other School staff.

If the Concern is serious, we may contact your manager or another senior member of staff at your provider to help us look into the report. We will emphasise to them the need for confidentiality and discretion in that process, and will protect your privacy as much as we are able while looking into the Concern.

The majority of Concerns raised by students are likely to be of a minor nature. Receiving a Concern should not be unduly worrying, and the School is keen to work in partnership with you and your employer to ensure that any issues can be resolved as quickly and fairly as possible.

Even in the case of more serious Concerns, if you have responded with mature self-reflection and identified steps that can be taken to correct issues it is unlikely these will impact on your participation in student education.

The CPRT is jointly managed by the Partnerships and Placements Team and the Student Education and Experience Team. Access to the CPRT database, particularly Concerns, is tightly controlled, and only shared with the relevant individuals necessary to process a given report.

If you submit a Concern, you will be asked for feedback on the process in order to ensure that our system is fair, equitable, and supports you adequately. If you have feedback after using other pathways, or general obversions on the website and other material associated with the CPRT, please email [email protected].

The CPRT will be governed by an Oversight Committee that will meet twice a year. This group will look at the reports that have come through the system, and use this information to both improve the CPRT and to identify aspects of placements that may require further improvement.

The Oversight Committee will publish an annual report at the end of the academic year that will present the total numbers of Commendations and Concerns and will indicate the themes that Concerns fall into. It is the School’s intention to be transparent about reports submitted to the CPRT, and where possible we will indicate the kind of actions we have taken in response to the Concerns we have received. No information will be included that could possibly identify an individual who has submitted or received a Concern, and confidentiality and privacy will be paramount considerations in creating this report.

The Oversight Committee will recommend changes on the basis of student feedback and other information gathered over the course of the year. If any changes are made, we will communicate these to you at the start of the academic year.