CIPPET Study Support: 8. Understanding feedback

Throughout your studies with CIPPET you will receive feedback on your progress, including your coursework.  Feedback might be any of the following:

1. Comments in workshops
2. Comments in group discussions
3. Peer feedback and assessment (either another student or someone you work with)
4. Verbal comments on your work or progress
5. Verbal comments in mock assessments during a workshop
6. Verbal or written feedback from the programme team on common areas where students lost marks
7. Written feedback through mock tests through Blackboard
8. Written comments through Turnitin on your submitted draft or final coursework

Feedback forms a key part of your learning, so you understand the areas where you are doing well and where you can improve.  CIPPET will always focus on development feed-forward approaches, these are forms of feedback that will help you to develop your work to always strive to improve as a healthcare professional.

Whilst there will be specific comments on the pieces of work you upload, some of the common themes that are useful feedback for everyone to consider when putting together their portfolios include the below.  Please note that the programme team will expect students to read this information so may not make comments on every point they identify in your work - it is for you to reflect on your work against the following.

• We will not highlight every spelling or grammatical error, it is essential that you proofread your work carefully before the final submission.
• Whilst we will endeavour to make sure there are no examples of patient harm in your draft work that require amendment, e.g. incorrect doses, we are not able to provide a guarantee of this as the purpose of the feedback is around the learning outcomes and academic writing.  The draft feedback may not be done by a practitioner familiar with your area of practice so it is essential you double-check all work prior to submission.
• When reviewing topics discussed some are not that relevant to the programme and students must discuss moving forward in their role (e.g. non-medical prescribing, foundation to advanced practice, advanced history taking, research skills).  If your module relates to taking on a new role you must make sure you write about topics explicitly linked to your new role.
• Ensure you reference your work clearly - information can be found under the citing references from the menu above.
• When writing academic work make sure you avoid using contractions (e.g. can't rather than cannot), symbols (e.g. & rather than and) and check whether you should use the verb or the noun (e.g. practice versus practise); for more information on academic writing see the sections from the menu above.
• Only proper nouns need to be capitalised (e.g. generic drug names are lower case, branded drug names are capitalised as per their specific name found in the BNF / SPC)
• Remember to use the definite article where appropriate (e.g. rather than 'patient came to the clinic' the sentence should read 'the patient came to the clinic') (e.g. rather than 'by completing case study' the sentence should read 'by completing this case study').
• Ensure you know the difference between there and their and they're; practice and practise; license and licence etc.
• If you are using their rather than he or she check the sentence is clear and does not imply their refers to someone else (e.g. rather than 'Mrs Smith said their symptoms were worse at night' the sentence is clearer as 'Mrs Smith said her symptoms were worse at night').
• If you use abbreviations state them in full the first time with the abbreviation in brackets
• Do not assume that the reader will understand technical details, you should write your coursework such that an advanced generalist (i.e. an advanced practitioner who does not work in your area of practice) could understand it; this shows that you understand what you are doing and can communicate it to different groups of people
• It is not essential that appendices to a piece of written work are looked at by the reader; if you think something is relevant then it should be included in the main piece of work (this is separate to the appendices to your portfolio as a whole)
  • If there is supplementary evidence e.g. something from your time in practice that demonstrates competence then you can anonymise it and include as an appendix to your paper portfolio submission.
• When including figures they can distract from the information you have written, for example, we know what the reflective cycles are.  If a figure or table adds significant value and you want to include it then you should include a caption (which is referenced where appropriate) which is referred to in the text. 
• Avoid writing short one or two sentence paragraphs as the flow is difficult to follow, group your ideas into larger paragraphs and discuss themes together
• Whilst not mandatory, some students like to state the competencies they are mapping their coursework to at the end of their work to help them track of which ones they have gaps in your evidence for - unless asked for in the template or instructions this is optional.