Axia Digital’s work in Ireland – in collaboration with the Department of Nursing, Atlantic Technological University, Donegal – was recognised last night (April 27th 2023) at the prestigious Irish National Education Awards in Dublin. These awards recognise excellence in the third level education sector in on Ireland from both State and privately-funded institutions.
The Department of Nursing ATU Donegal, HSE and Axia Digital (Ireland) received the Best Industry/Business-Academic Collaboration Award for implementing the first digital version of the National Competency Assessment Document for Nurses.
This collaboration has brought together academic and industry partners to develop a cutting-edge nursing education programme. The collaboration leverages the strengths of each partner to create a web-based version of the assessment document that is accessed by the students and their practice-based Preceptors, who assess their work, and the Community Practice Co-ordinators who support the nurses when they are on placement. The assessment document can also be accessed remotely by tutors and the other University staff responsible for quality assuring the assessment process.
One of the remarkable features of this project was that whilst everyone accepts the direction of travel is towards digital because ‘it is the way to go’ – the practicalities, both real and imagined, represented challenges that hitherto have prevented such an approach being adopted. The project also began at a time when the cyber-attack at the HSE had ‘rocked’ the belief of health professionals in the safety of digital systems, and when the Covid pandemic was still leading to significant pressures on Hospitals and community health teams. The geography of the project area was also, on the face of it, potentially unhelpful. The site was not being accessed from a major city like Dublin but rather from smaller hospitals and community settings across Donegal.
Dr Louise McBride, Head of Nursing and Healthcare at ATU, commented: ‘The MyCad Eportfolio project collaboration brings together academic, industry and our HSE clinical nursing partners to develop a cutting-edge online access dashboard for nursing students and staff for a competence assessment Eportfolio in our nursing education programmes. We’re delighted to see our efforts being acknowledged and these nominations are a testament of collaboration, commitment and success of ATU with HSE North West Nursing and Axia Digital.”
Chris Peat, Chair, Axia Digital (Ireland) – who with Max Jordan, the company’s Senior Developer with Specialism (Assessment Systems) – led the team who implemented the site added:
‘Our technology platform has been developed over 20 years and it enables us to transform paper based assessment processes into digital ones. This transformation brings many benefits and crucially enables health professionals to focus on what matters, which is the practice development and assessment of nurses by streamlining the administration of the process. We’re delighted to have collaborated with ATU Donegal so that it has become the first University in Ireland where nurses are using an assessment document that they can access from their mobile phone.’
An online dissemination event to present the site and provide an opportunity to talk to some of its users takes place on Thursday 11th May between 11.00 and 13.00. Please book your place by emailing events@axiadigitalireland.com .