Mental Health PAD Development Project

In order to meet the challenges posed by the changing nature of health care delivery and the impact this will have upon the role and function of future clinical nurse practitioners, Rick Ellis, the Course Leader of the pre-registration DipHE Nursing (Mental Health) at UCS, is undertaking a project, which includes stakeholder participation through partnership working, in the development, monitoring and review of the Practice Assessment Document (PAD) used by students on that programme.

Our stakeholders are those individuals and organisations who contribute practice learning opportunities to students on the mental health branch programme.

The aim of this project is to develop a partnership working group that designs, monitors and reviews a PAD document that continues to be contemporary, flexible and user-friendly and is able to accommodate the ongoing changes experienced both within stakeholder provision and participation whilst at the same time meeting the competency and proficiency requirements outlined by the NMC (2007) for mental health nursing students.

The project commenced in October 2008 and is dependant on support from a range of stakeholders who currently are or may wish to become part of the practice support matrix to the UCS programme. This includes:-

  • Mentors from all areas of practice who are actively involved in the supervision of pre-registration mental health nursing students from UCS.
  • UCS students currently undertaking the mental health branch programme.
  • Service users and carers.
  • Interested parties from the statutory, private and voluntary sectors who may wish to contribute practice based experiences in the future.

If you feel that you have experience that can contribute to these aims then you are most cordially invited to participate in the project.

Participation will be through attendance at focus groups held in the education centre at Ipswich Hospital and by contribution to the completion of process reporting via material made available on this website on a term by term basis.

For further enquiries or to register your interest in becoming part of this project, please contact Rick Ellis by e-mail richard.ellisucs.ac.uk| or by telephone 01473 338515