Contemporary issues relating to assessment of pre-registration nursing students in practice.

Clinical placements are an essential part of pre-registration nurse education. Mentors have a vital role in providing constructive feedback and assessing the student throughout their placement. There have been reports of failing to fail students in practice, however, little evidence has been provided to support this. This paper provides an insight into apparent mismatches between mentor feedback given to students in their practice assessment documents and feedback given to university and Trust staff anonymously. Our findings appear to illustrate issues of inconsistency and a lack of ability to give accurate feedback on professional values and behaviours. This is in contrast to the feedback on clinical skills - in which the mentors appeared to be in agreement, with the written comments being supported by congruent scores in the relevant competencies. Copyright 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.