Issues of accountability in the assessment of practice.

The nature of nursing work makes the Code of Professional Conduct's moral and professional emphasis appropriate. However this is to the detriment of practitioners' moral, professional and contractual accountability towards learners. Practitioners may fail to make the paradigmatic shift necessary for them to be accountable for the teaching, supervision and assessment of learners. This is a direct consequence of the paucity of assessor preparation and the utilization of assessors with limited professional experience. They have been invested with an authority of which they are unaware and for which they are unprepared.