Hull: Profiles and Portfolios title

Profilers

Developing a profile can seem a difficult task. What to include? How? When? What format? The questions may appear overwhelming. This site, alongside Profiles and Portfolios 2e, will ease your worries and help you get the most from your work. Throughout the rest of the section you’ll find advice on learning strategies and guidance on career development – whether you’re a student or an experienced practitioner.

1. Learning

Please follow the links to the right to access either the For Students or the For Practitioners pages. Both sections contain a wealth of information to help you design your own profile, and ensure you benefit as much as possible from the process

a. For Students

Keeping a Reflective Journal

(See pp 5-6 and Chapter 6)

Some would argue the whole purpose of a profile is to encourage the development of reflective skills. Professional work is exceedingly complex and often fast moving, with decisions needing to be made about the best alternatives as you go along. Reflection is about thinking, learning from your experience and making use of that learning in the future. Most commercially available profiles address the issue of reflective practice.

Profiling is a continuous practice that breaks down into three steps:

  • Step 1: Reviewing your experience to date
  • Step 2: Self-appraisal
  • Step 3: Setting goals and action planning

Writing down your reflections is useful as it makes your thoughts easier to structure and analyse in an objective way, and provides a permanent record on which you can build.

Here are a few tips on reflective writing:

  • Be frank and honest
  • Take a positive approach to profiling
  • Be spontaneous and if it helps you, use diagrams, illustrations, highlighting and underlining
  • Persevere!

How do I reflect?

Although this is a very individual process there are five main steps that can be followed, as set out by Schon (1983):

Step 1: Set aside time to reflect in a place where there will be no distractions

Step 2: Choose a situation or event to reflect on

Don’t be afraid to trust your instincts, you do not have to have a reason behind your choice. The situation you choose to reflect on may be routine and every day but this does not matter as long as it is significant to you. Recall as many details of the incident as you can and write it down

Step 3: Critically reflect on the situation or event

It is best to follow a structure in order to organise your reflection. As a beginner, you may want to use a structure that has been devised by people with more experience in critical reflection. As you become more confident, you can adapt these structures to your own personal preference

Step 4: Identify areas of learning and decide on any necessary follow-up actions

This is where you convert reflection into learning- identifying what there is to learn from both your successes and your difficulties. You can even compare what you have learnt with information from other professionals and any literature on the topic

Step 5: Revisit and Re-evaluate

This is a helpful exercise to do from time to time as it highlights your progress and identifies any patterns in the situations you have been reflecting on

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Privacy and Confidentiality

As you will be writing down information in it is important that the issue of confidentiality is addressed. You must both protect your patients and colleagues as well as yourself. It is important that you write freely and are not concerned about censoring the content of your profile. Only those with your permission may read your profile. In the PREP Handbook the NMC specifies which parts of your profile it may request to see so you can organise your profile accordingly, screening out those parts you do not wish it to see.

When writing about patients and colleagues, avoid identifying then by name, as this could constitute a breach of confidentiality.

Profiling as part of a formal assessment

You may be asked to submit sections of your profile as part of the assessment process for a course or programme you are following. In this case, you need to be quite clear what is expected of you, and the confidentiality of the information you hand in.

Links between study, reflection and profiling

Coming soon

Learning styles inventory

People learn in many different ways and understanding the way you learn will make your learning more effective. The activity on page 133 is adapted from the work of Kolb (1984) and is designed to help you to explore how you learn best.

Discussing your reflective journal with your tutor

Coming soon

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b. For Practitioners

Up-to-date info on profiling, goal and action planning

You need to clarify your long and short term learning goals. You may need to develop certain skills in order to complete your profile. A long-term goal may be to complete the profile whilst a short-term goal might be to develop the written skills to a personally and professionally satisfactory standard. You should write these goals down and establish certain criteria for success.

Successful criteria for the completion of the profile might include the following:

  • I have used it to support an application for a job
  • I have used it to gain academic credit against a course
  • It was constructed, cross referenced and written to a high professional standard
  • I now understand far more about myself and my professional development needs

Successful criteria for the completion of written skills might include the following:

  • I now have confidence in my writing ability
  • I can construct sentences using my own words and phrases
  • I now understand the writing process
  • My profile is written clearly, concisely and using my own style

Drawing up an action plan

To assist you in compiling you profile, you should work out the actions you will take and timescale for each, in order to achieve your goals.

Here is an example of an action plan for developing a personal writing style: Copy points 1-5 on Pg 121.


Setting targets:

  • /skills4study/html/pdp/p102.pdf
    Although self-appraisal should be a continuous process, it is particularly important to appraise you performance if you change your job or are involved in a significant event.

Identify personal goals (IPR)

Most staff in health care now experience some form of IPR and most systems include an opportunity for you to look back on the previous review period and identify achievements and disappointments. Of course, this is much facilitated if you have maintained a profile, as it is likely to contain details of formal or informal learning opportunities you have had during the review period.


Monitoring progress:

Please click on the link below for a document to help you keep track of your progress on learning goals.


Evaluating performance:

You need to find ways of working out how effective you have been at the learning process. Evaluation is simply a process of enabling you to do so. Evaluation should enable you to think about your profiling skills, identify your weaknesses and map out ways of building upon your strengths. As such it is an essential part of the learning process.

There are two forms of evaluation, formative and summative. Formative evaluation is the continuous evaluation that goes on throughout the learning process. Summative evaluation is that which takes place when the profile has finally been completed. Both forms are in fact linked in reality and as a profiler, you should be involved in both. To access a document to evaluate personal performance, please click on the link below.

 

Figures and Tables

Documenting Experience

The tables below provide a useful guide on how to reflect on past learning and how to keep a record of what you have learnt from your experiences.

Date

Place

Experience

Significant learning

Example

01.06.74

St John’s Nursery Sidcup

Nursery nurse placement

Working in a team

First aid course

Developing writing

Skills

Working on own

initiative

The Development Process

Experience

Key factors

What I learnt

Using what I have learnt

Example

Working as a nursery

Nurse, St John’s Nursery

Looking after children

Time management

Management of self

How to work on my own initiative

Better at dealing with crises.

Bringing up children on my own.

Organising my time

Listening to others.

 

c. Skills inventory

Key skills that are commonly required for success in education, life and work are:

    • application of numbers
    • communication
    • improving own learning
    • information technology
    • problem solving
    • working with others

d. Models for PREP profiles

Coming soon

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2. Careers Guidance

One of the key benefits of keeping a portfolio is the insight it can give you into your own career aspirations. It would be a waste to come this far and suddenly feel unable to realise any of your plans. This section of the site is therefore dedicated to the next step – finding out what’s on offer in your field and helping you to get there.

a. For Health Care Workers

What’s on offer?

The following websites list jobs in the Health Sector

  • www.reed.co.uk/health
    Reed allows you to browse numerous jobs in health and medicine.
  • www.bna.co.uk
    The British Nursing Association is the UK's largest nursing and care agency, providing nurses and care assistants to private hospitals and trusts, nursing homes, industry, home care, prisons and schools nationwide.
  • www.nursinginlondon.com
    Providing advice and information on living and working in London, together with a searchable database of all notified nursing and midwifery vacancies.
Applying and getting the job
  • /skills4study/
    Deciding whether you need further development
  • /skills4study/
    Form to help you identify your core skills and competencies
  • http://www.qaa.ac.uk/p Guidance from the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education on keeping progress files and preparing for employment

Further resources

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b. For Social Care Workers

What’s on offer?

Applying and getting the job

  • /
    Deciding where you need further development
  • /
    Form to help you identify your core skills and competences
  • http://www.qaa.ac.uk/
     Guidance from the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education on keeping progress files and preparing for employment


Further resources
Coming soon.

 

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