AXIA digital

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National Competency Assessment Document for nurses in Ireland online event

The team behind the implementation of the first digital version of the National Competency Assessment Document for nurses in Ireland will be telling their story at an online event on May 11th between 11.00 and 13.00.

The primary purpose of the event will be to enable delegates to hear directly from the team, about how their initial concerns and doubts about whether a digital solution would work, especially in the dispersed communities around Letterkenny, were allayed by the discovery of the benefits that an online solution can bring. Such as on the day when although storms prevented a CPC from visiting a placement, they could still meet the student online and review their portfolio.

The event will also feature Professor Thomas Kearns, Consultant and Co-Director WHO Collaborating Centre who was one of the first to recognise the impact that digital solutions could have on the education and professional development of nurses and has for many years been a powerful and persuasive advocate of e-portfolios.

The event’s Chair is Dr. Louise McBride who as well as being the Head of the Department of Nursing and Healthcare, Atlantic Technological University is also the current President of the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland. It was Louise who could see the potential of adopting a digital approach to the practice assessment of nurses, following her attendance at the RCSI’s annual conference, where a presentation was made by Bournemouth University of their e-portfolio which was being used by nurses and those that supported them.

Delegates will both be shown MyCad.ie and receive reassurance about the measures that have taken to make sure that the site is secure and about how scalable the site is if other institutions in Ireland decide to adopt it.

Registrations for the event are still being accepted however both registrants and anyone else who is interested can join the “Teams” event by selecting this link on the May 11th  2023 at 11.00

The programme for the event is as follows;

11.00 Welcome by Dr. Louise McBride Head of Department of Nursing and Healthcare, Atlantic Technological University

11.10 Professor Thomas Kearns Consultant and Co-Director WHO Collaborating Centre ‘Some reflections on the importance and benefits of those involved in the education and professional development on adopting digital solutions.’

11.20 Mr Chris Peat Chair of Axia Digital (Ireland) will speak on ‘How the legitimate and important concerns about adopting a digital approach can be addressed and resolved.

11.35 Presentation of the digital version of the National Competency Assessment Document on the MyCad.ie site. This will include looking at the reports that are available.

11.50 An opportunity to respond to questions raised during the presentations using Chat, chaired by Dr. Louise McBride

12 noon to 12.30 The User experience, an opportunity to hear from students, CPCs and Tutors who use MyCad.ie

This will include a presentation of a Video that captures the user experience and the opportunity to then question those that were involved in the creation of the video.

Following the event this video will be available to share with other colleagues.

12.30 Concluding remarks and opportunity to ask further questions.

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Axia Digital wins prestigious Irish Education Award


 

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 .

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Axia presents at a major Assessment conference

This weekend (August 26th to 28th) a major international assessment conference will be taking place concurrently in Ottawa and Lyon. The theme of the conference is ‘Reimagining Assessment Across the Continuum’ and focuses predominantly on solutions for the health sector. The title of Axia’s oral presentation will be on the theme of the ‘The Use of Skills Passports/Mini-Credentials for Assessment and Planning’.

The presentation will demonstrate the diverse groups, for whom we have developed Passports in collaboration with different health bodies and suppliers to meet specific challenges.

The Critical Care Skills Passport was a collaboration with Health Education England to support professionals working in and reallocated to Intensive Care Wards, in the response to the Covid waves, to demonstrate their skills for that setting and have these assessed. The passport was developed in less than a month and has now been rolled out nationally and was short-listed for a National Nursing Award. A video that describes the implementation and adoption of the passport is available below.

The Microsurgery Skills Passport is a collaboration with the Innovation team at the University Hospitals in Coventry and Warwickshire, UK and has been designed to enable Microsurgeons demonstrate their skills by uploading videos of their work and setting this against a competency framework.

The TVLC Wound Care Passport was developed with the support of Urgo Medical and Professor Karen Ousey and Leanne Atkin of Huddersfield University and it enables nurses and other health professionals progressively demonstrate their skills in wound care.

In development is also a passport for the Saudi which is a partnership project with the Nursing and Midwifery Faculty of the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland. The passport is available in English and Arabic.

Chris Peat the Chair of the company who is making the presentation comments that, ‘Skills Passports and Mini Credentials have long been recognised as an important assessment tool. For the individual health professional, they can demonstrate the specific advanced skills they have developed post qualification. From an organisational perspective it enables them to ensure that they have the right skills mix in their organisation so that they can respond to workforce challenges. Presenting the passports digitally is a major contributor to their widespread adoption.’


The key benefits of the Skills Passports developed by Axia Digital.

  • Fully mobile enabled.
  • Reflect fully the content of the existing assessment for a credential.
  • A passport can be delivered quickly if required using a tried and tested technical architecture.
  • The passports are highly intuitive and do not require training to use.
  • Contribute to workforce planning by enabling individuals to demonstrate the specific skills they have and have these assessed.
  • Enable a passport to be presented in different languages

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Providing further support to frontline NHS staff

On Monday 11th January we were approached by the London Transformation and Learning Collaborative to develop a Skills Passport for staff working in Intensive Care Units working in London. This morning just two weeks later the tool has been made live to those staff. Jane Fish, the project manager explains the purpose of the project.

‘This work led by Clare Leon Villapalos, (Imperial College Health Care Trust) in partnership with stakeholders across London, on the CC Skills Passport for RSC and NRSS roles will make an important contribution to preparing and supporting staff redeployed during surge to ICU and Covid clinical areas.

Our thanks to Axia Digital for the pace at which they worked to move the passport to a digital platform and to the many stakeholders who tested the passport.’

Providing the Skills Passport on a digital platform will enhance its accessibility for both Registered Support Clinician (RSC) and Non Registered Support Staff (NRSS) users as well as for the staff working in the environments where staff members have been redeployed.’

This project was commissioned during one of the busiest months for the company, however, we saw that there was an urgent requirement, and we knew that our technology was created to respond to this sort of challenge. Richard Etheridge our Technical and Operations Director comments,

‘The team grasped with both hands the opportunity to demonstrate the capability of our core platform to develop user-friendly and robust sites at pace. We were also able to use the knowledge gained from developing Skills Passports for other Health workers. There is growing interest in our capability to provide solutions that help new skills be quickly developed and recognised.’

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Helping our customers meet the challenges posed by Covid 19

A significant proportion of the company’s business is in the health sector and therefore it will be not be a surprise that we have actively been supporting many of our customers meet the challenges presented by Covid 19.

The configurability of our software has meant we have been able to make rapid changes to our sites even for some of our newest customers.

Last year Health Education England selected the company to create an e-portfolio for Dentists involved on post qualification training programmes across England and Wales. The site is now built and been well received, prior to being used in earnest by trainees from September.

However due to Covid 19 the training programmes of last year’s graduates have been disrupted because of the closure of Dental practices and the programme for the new graduates has had to been altered to reflect the fact that they will also have reduced access to practice.

The Axia Digital team has had to work rapidly both to adapt the existing practice assessments and to provide additional assessments for this year’s student. All this has been achieved on time whilst still retaining all the features of the existing programme, for when full access to practice becomes available.

The development of the e-portfolio for the Royal Pharmaceutical Society also posed a similar challenge. The RPS working in conjunction with Health Education England, had to quickly to adapt their Foundation programme to create a Provisional Foundation Programme which reflects the challenges faced by new Pharmacists, entering a highly demanding working environment.

Working closely with the team at the RPS the portfolio to support the programme was developed in five weeks and has already been soft launched. The team is now moving on to expand the e-portfolio so that it can be used by Pharmacists working at Consultant Practice level.

Alongside this work we have made quick changes to many of the Practice Assessment portfolios we provide to Nursing courses in response to the changing patterns of placements as a result of the demands on hospitals due to Covid 19.

Our unique offer lies in our ability to deliver to our customers exactly what they require. We do not have products but instead a platform which we can use to mirror our customer processes. None of our customers need to change what they do to fit into our system, our system is flexible enough to reflect what they currently do and enhance the user’s experience.

Since 1997 AXIA Digital has been helping organisations capture and assess skills and competencies that are demonstrated in a professional setting or in the workplace. We create leading edge digital solutions, which mirror and then enhance existing assessment systems. Our solutions are all individually hand crafted but are deployed on the same platform.

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