Assessment Form Status
Not planned
Dear Team,
I would like to make a suggestion regarding the status of the assessment forms. These forms represent our WPBA's and we are required to ensure that our supervisors complete a minimum number each year. It can be difficult for supervisors to keep on top of assessments that are pending their completion, given the demands of the clinical work, which has to take priority within their working role, as well as other factors, such as having a number of trainees.
I have been thinking of ways that would support supervisors to complete these in a timely fashion, as well as reduce the requirement for the trainee to “chase” supervisors for their completion, and thereby reduce uncertainty for the trainee.
I thought of the following as a suggestions to be considered or built upon/modified:
1. One week after the trainee sends the request to the supervisor, portfolio online generates an automatic reminder email to be sent to the supervisor (copying in trainee) that the assessment remains outstanding. I think it would be reasonable for an assessment to be completed within 3 weeks of being requested; this date could be included on the reminder email.
2. A further reminder email could be sent when 3 days before the assessment date is due
3. Once the assessment has been completed, the trainee received an automatic email to advise that it has been completed and is ready to review.
4. If three weeks passes, and an assessment has not been completed by the supervisor, an automatic email could be sent to the supervisor to advise them of this and request they prioritise the completion of the assessment.
It would seem that this would be relatively easy to organise from an e-portfolio review perspective. I would really value hearing your thoughts/considerations on this issue.
Kind regards,
Dr Bhamini Patel
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Official comment
Sorry for the delay in responding, we were not notified of this suggestion and because this is a low-traffic area of the website, we did not realise that your suggestion has not been responded to.
Thanks for taking the time to provide this detailed suggestion. I believe your intention is to encourage your assessors to complete forms through the use of automated reminders.
System-generated e-mails have always been somewhat challenging. In particular, the fundamental nature of email itself, being a somewhat unreliable form of communication, has been the root cause of many support tickets (i.e. the mini-pat nomination process). Whilst we have done everything we can to try and mitigate this, once an email has successfully been sent from our mail server, there are many factors outside of our control that determine whether the recipient ultimately receives this.
As such, we have made a conscious design choice to not send e-mail from the system unless it is essential. This is to try and maintain “Sender Reputation” so that these critical emails are less likely to get flagged as junk/spam.
We recognise that there is a case for the use of automated reminders in order to effect behavioural change. However, there are other factors that make the decision to send these kinds of reminder emails more complex. In particular, the unintended consequences of automated reminders that can have a negative impact on both effectiveness and the well-being of the recipient. [1,2,3]
As such, we concluded that it may be more appropriate for the trainee to determine whether a reminder email is necessary, and to facilitate this, we provide the ability to manually re-send nomination e-mails for both MSF and WPBA.
In addition to this, we would also suggest considering whether it might be better to send an email yourself directly to the supervisor from your own email address. This might be a more effective means of communication, giving you much greater control over the content of the message. This might also mitigate any potential stress that might otherwise be associated with system-generated emails.
[1] Perri-Moore S., Kapsandoy S., Doyon K et al. Automated alerts and reminders targeting patients: a review of the literature. Patient Educ Couns. 2016;99(6):953-959.doi:10.1016/j.pec.2015.12.010
[2] Andre Lanctot, Linda Duxbury, Measurement of Perceived Importance and Urgency of Email: An Employees’ Perspective, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Volume 27, Issue 2, March 2022, zmac001, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmac001
[3] Stich, J.-F., Tarafdar, M., Cooper, C.L. and Stacey, P. (2017), Workplace stress from actual and desired computer-mediated communication use: a multi-method study. New Technology, Work and Employment, 32: 84-100. https://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12079
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