Writing for your portfolio: Using evidence for career, competence and credit

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Writing for your portfolio Using evidence for
career, competence and credit

• Stuart Cable
• scable_at_qmu.ac.uk

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What is a portfolio?

• ...private collection of evidence which
  demonstrates the continuing acquisition of
  skills, knowledge, attitudes, understanding and
  achievement ...retrospective and prospective as
  well as reflecting the current stage of
  development and activity of the individual.

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and a profile is?

• A profile is constructed from evidence 'selected
  from the personal portfolio for a particular
  purpose and for the attention of a particular
  audience.'
• Consequently a profile is a more public document
  and issues of confidentiality, accountability and
  the moral and ethical decisions about selection
  and preparation of material are important.

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Portfolio development
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Writing for an audience

• Whos your audience
• Academic
• Professional
• Formal
• Informal
• Colleagues, manager, professional body, course
  tutor, self

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How succinctly can you write?

• Exercise Try to edit the text below to see by
  how much you can reduce the wordage whilst
  retaining the meaning
• Generally it is the case that mental health care
  for older adults in secondary services is, in the
  main, organised around a cut-off age of 65 years
  to define later life. As a consequence, this has
  meant that people diagnosed before the age of 65
  years are transferred to another service on the
  date of their 65th birthday. On the whole this
  mainly affects those people who experience
  illnesses such as the following schizophrenia,
  anxiety disorders and clinical depression. The
  prevalence of clinical depression in the over-65s
  is estimated to be somewhere in the region of 15
  per cent or higher.

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Cut out extra words

• Edited example
• Generally it is the case that mental health
  care for older adults in secondary services is,
  in the main, organised around a cut-off age of
  65 years to define later life. As a
  consequence, this has meant that people
  diagnosed before the age of 65 years are
  transferred to another service on the date of
  their 65th birthday. On the whole this mainly
  affects those people who experience illnesses
  such as the following schizophrenia, anxiety
  disorders and clinical depression. The prevalence
  of clinical depression in the over-65s is
  estimated to be somewhere in the region of 15
  per cent or higher.

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Working with evidence
Find it keep everything (electronic storage
means allows much material in little space) Match
it think about purpose (electronic options
allow drag and drop or cut and paste) Present
it quality not quantity here linking
narratives help
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Writing a narrative

• Ensure you provide a clear convincing discussion
  of evidence
• Use different pieces of evidence to persuade your
  jury
• Link it to competencies, outcomes or objectives
  e.g. code individual pieces of evidence or create
  an evidence grid to clarify for readers the link
  between outcomes and evidence.

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Example of a narrative

• Learning Outcome Work both autonomously and as a
  member of a variety of community and social care
  teams negotiating their own responsibilities as
  the situation, tasks and composition of the teams
  require.
• My activity in the general practice setting is
  across a wide variety of health and disease
  issues. I specialise in asthma care, diabetes
  care, travel health, health promotion and health
  assessment techniques to name but a few. My
  activity can be autonomous when dealing, for
  example, with an individual who requires
  assessment, diagnosis, treatment and education
  about asthma, or can result in collaboration with
  a variety of healthcare teams when dealing, for
  example, with a person who lives with
  insulin-dependent diabetes.
• Examples of my liaison with other members of the
  healthcare team include
• Liaison with GPs practice staff chiropodist
  local opticians diabetes nurse specialist
  district nurses, and nurses in nursing homes to
  develop diabetes care in our area. The joint
  input of this group to our diabetes protocol (17)
  can be seen in the signatories at the end of the
  protocol, which can be found in the evidence
  section of this portfolio.
• Liaison with dieticians to develop the lipid
  protocol (22, 23) and the services for people in
  our practice population.
• Development of the over 75s health check protocol
  (14) which brings together the health-visiting
  team, practice staff and GPs.
• Provision of Health Fairs (27) for local school
  children and members of the local community.
  Letters of referral to the local diabetologists,
  chiropodists, respiratory specialist nurses,
  dieticians and others (anonymised).
• Provision of women's health services at the
  practice involves working autonomously when I
  carry out screening for cervical cytology and
  provide advice about breast awareness and in a
  team as the female GP that I work with has
  specialist knowledge in women's health and,
  therefore, the more complex patients are referred
  on to her and/or we address the problem together.
• All of the above are examples of my present
  practice. I work autonomously in some situations
  and as a member of a team in many more
  situations. This is underpinned by the certified
  learning outlined above, however, as can be seen
  from my CV I have experience of working in the
  community as a health visitor assistant and as a
  community sister for the hospice. I also had
  experience of the hospice at home service during
  my time in oncology in the United States. This
  past experience has all helped to inform my
  awareness of community teams and their importance
  in the delivery of health care services to our
  practice population.

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Example of an evidence matrix
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Evidence quality check

• Validity relevant evidence?
• Sufficiency - enough evidence?
• Currency - up-to-date evidence?
• Authenticity - your evidence?

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Uses for your portfolio evidence

• Manager for appraisal interview
• Coach/ supervisor for evaluation of progress
• Assessor for accreditation of new competencies
• To record CPD activities for keeping in good
  standing and professional accreditation
• Colleagues for discussion when reflecting on own
  practice or seeking testimonials
• To boost self-esteem

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KSF Profile

• Common descriptions of knowledge and skills that
  need to be applied in the NHS
• Evidence against dimensions of practice
• 6 core dimensions
• 25 specific dimensions in four groups (Care - 9,
  Facilities - 4, Information 3, General - 9
• Annual development reviews/ Personal development
  plan

Dimension 1 Descriptor Level 4 Develop and
maintain communication with people on complex
matters, issues and ideas and/or in complex
situations
What evidence?
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PREP profile

• Demonstration of competence or fitness to
  practice
• Maintenance of registration
• Nature, description and outcome of learning
  activities

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CATS APL/APEL and all that!

• Recognises value of past learning
• Reduced duplication of effort,
• but, requires evidence!

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Demonstrating competences

• RCN Core Career and Competency Framework enables
  
• identification and planning of competence
  development as progress through career,
• achievement of multiple agendas within one
  portfolio, e.g., to demonstrate evidence of
• Competence at four different levels in general
  and specialist areas of nursing Competent Nurse,
  Experienced Nurse, Senior Practitioner, and
  Consultant Nurse)
• Readiness to progress to the next career level
  using, for example, tools that help nurses to
  become professionally accredited
• Achievement of the Knowledge and Skills
  Framework in relation to own job profile/post
  outline pay band.

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RCN Core Nursing Competence
COMPETENT NURSE
KSF Dimension Core 1. COMMUNICATION Level 3
Develop and maintain communication with people
about difficult matters and/or in difficult
situations
Skills for Health Competences
Areas of application to nursing practice with
examples (core)
Indicators
HSC31 Promote communication for and about
individuals

• a) Communicates effectively and in appropriate
  manner with
• - patients, those important to patients, users.
• - the nursing team
• - the interdisciplinary team i.e., social
  workers, doctors, bed managers, modern matrons,
  allied health professionals, administrative
  staff, housekeeping staff other health care
  professionals

a a). identifies the range of people likely to
be involved in the communication, any potential
communication differences and relevant contextual
factors
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Vocational Qualifications (N/SVQ)

• Nationally recognised qualifications
• Show that you are competent at your job
• Meet national occupational standards
• Units of competence are achieved through
  assessment in your workplace
• Units are collected together to form a National
  Vocational Qualification
• Qualifications are awarded at different levels
  dependent on the job you do
• Achieved through building portfolio of evidence

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VQ Occupational Health and Safety

• Examples of evidence that may be used in a
  portfolio include the following
• Review and implementation of health and safety
  policies.
• Review and implementation of emergency
  procedures.
• Training in relation to health and safety, e.g.
  induction training.
• Active monitoring, e.g. inspections, safety tours
  and surveys.
• Data analysis, e.g. near-miss analysis.
• Safety meetings and the decision making process.
• Risk assessments, both qualitative and
  quantitative

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For portfolio development and gathering evidence
visit

• www.rcn.org.uk/learningzone
• and let me know what you think of this session
• stuart.cable_at_qmu.ac.uk