Edinburgh Napier University

  Project Summary
This project aims to address the complex challenges in providing meaningful feedback to students in the
practice learning environment. A literature review will examine the current published research and scholarship
in this area.
Aim
The aim of the project is to identify relevant literature related to feedback in practice assessment.
Objectives
To undertake a review of the literature related to the provision of feedback within nursing, medicine, dentistry
and allied health professionals, within the current published research and scholarship.
To identify search terms to be agreed between the team.
To set inclusion criteria to include all academic papers; government literature and professional guidance
literature that focuses on the processes of feedback in practice assessment in relation to the achievement of
professional competencies. Given the specific nature of the NMC nursing standards, and their recent
introduction, only papers from 2010 onwards will be included initially.
To set exclusion criteria to exclude papers that do not hold direct relevance to assessment and supervision in
relation to professional competencies and/or did not relate to assessment and supervision in practice learning
environments.
Results
A search of the literature 2010-2014 resulted in Initial search n=208, after reading the abstracts for relevance
n=55, after reading the articles n=35 in total.
Findings
There were seven main areas that emerged from the literature: the nature of feedback, seeking feedback,
understanding of feedback, relationship between Mentors and Students, timing of feedback, length of the
practice experience and barriers.