Supervision is central to the success of pre-registration and post-registration education, as well as continuing professional development. Educators and supervisors must have relevant qualifications, experience and undertake appropriate training. This web tool provides clinical supervisors and/or health care educators with an opportunity to obtain feedback from their trainees / learners.
As suggested by the Framework for Educators (2017) the term 'educator' encompasses all educational, supervisory, preceptorship and mentorship roles of all learner groups, at the undergraduate and postgraduate level.
The formal articulation of the role of clinical educators varies between the health professions. The degree to which the role is formalised appears to be linked to how far professional organisations or accrediting bodies have developed over-arching frameworks of good practice for educators. The degree to which clinical educator roles are segmented and stratified also varies between professions. In some professions there is a generic educator role, and in others a series of support roles, ranging from a one-on-one role overseeing the trainee in placement as one aspect of a clinical post (cf. clinical supervisors in medicine), to more senior educators with additional assessment, organising and co-ordination responsibilities, or who supervise junior clinical educators (cf. educational supervisors in medicine). The precise role is likely to vary depending on the seniority of the educator’s clinical post (Austerberry and Newman (2013) Review of qualifications and training for clinical educators in health care professions, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London).
Your data are held confidentially. No individual’s MSF data are divulged. Supervisors/Educators undertaking the tool can only obtain a report once sufficient trainees/learners have submitted an assessment and will not be able to identify an individual trainee’s rating as the report only contains mean ratings across all assessors. Text comments are produced verbatim in these reports; if you do not wish your comments to be attributable please word them appropriately. In addition to the supervisor/educators reports, the data may be used for research purposes but no individual’s response will ever be identifiable. The objective of the research is to understand more about the tool and improve its utility. We require GMC numbers(medics performing the MSF) in order to link the MSF data as follows: for supervisors the GMC number is used to link the MSF data to the GMC register to obtain details such as specialty, gender and year of qualification. For trainees the GMC number is used to link the MSF data to the MSF database to obtain details such as training programme. In addition the use of GMC number will prevent duplicate records entering the database. This approach has been taken to ensure accuracy and reduce the burden of data entry. Initially these additional pieces of data will only be used for research. In the future they may be used to produce comparative reports for the supervisors, for example a given supervisor’s ratings compared to rating of other supervisors working in the same specialty.
The tool was piloted with London trainers between December 2009 and February 2010. Health Education England is very grateful to the 128 educational supervisors and the 634 trainees who participated in this work. As a result a number of refinements to content and process were made prior to the launch. The full pilot report is available here: https://london.hee.nhs.uk/search/node/MSF Design
We hope that all named supervisors make use of the site and obtain feedback from their trainees. Take-up of the tool will be reported by specialty and location on the faculty development website.
In February 2010 we asked trusts within London Deanery to provide details of their educational supervisors as at the 1 February 2010.
These census data were loaded into the MSF database
Educational supervisors were sent an email asking them to activate their accounts on the site
From December 2010 the activation process was changed to include a check that they have enough trainees to reach the threshold required for a report.
Once activated, named supervisors are asked to nominate trainees to rate them. These must be trainees they have supervised in the last year and no further back in time. If necessary the supervisor can opt to nominate more trainees at later date, for instance when the trainees next rotate.
After 28 days if sufficient trainees have rated the named supervisor a report will be available for that supervisor. If this threshold has not been reached the system will send reminders.
From December 2010 there is a check in place to ensure the trainees nominated are able to provide feedback, if not further nominations are required.
We welcome your feed back, please use the Contact Us Link on the left at the top of this page. The items on the tool and the reports generated will be reviewed and possibly developed further in June 2011.
Further details on the development on the background, development and current usage of the tool are available here: https://london.hee.nhs.uk/search/node/MSF Design