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Learners, clinical staff or academics can raise a concern about a practice learning environment when they encounter issues or experiences that may affect:
Effective supervision of learners
Issues influencing the ability of learners to achieve practice learning outcomes
Service user, learner or staff safety, including sexual safety
The quality of the learning environment, including equality, diversity or inclusion concerns
Professional behaviour, e.g. bullying, harassment, racism or other unprofessional conduct
Safeguarding or public protection
The wellbeing of staff or learners
Access to appropriate clinical equipment or training
Fraud or malpractice
How to raise a concern
Discuss locally with the person responsible for supervising and supporting the learner in practice. This may be a Practice Educator/Assessor, Clinical Lead or another senior team member.
If the issue cannot be or is not addressed locally in a reasonable timeframe, contact the UEA Academic Link for the area (Link Lecturer / Visiting Tutor) and report to the School using the ‘HSC Raising Concerns about Practice Learning and Reporting Incidents Relating to Practice’ MS Form.
Where available, report to the Clinical/Practice Education team for the organisation.
If you are a learner, you may wish to inform your Advisor and/or Course Director.
The Director of Practice Learning will:
Contact you to arrange to meet (in person or on MS Teams) to gather more information about your concerns and what actions have or have not been taken. If you are a member of clinical staff, this will include a member of the clinical education team in the provider organisation, if available. If you are a learner, this will include your Advisor or Course Director to provide support for you.
Ask you to write a concise written statement if the original concern missed important details.
Log the concern and any actions taken in the School of Health Sciences register for audit and governance purposes.
If it involves an NHS Trust, the concern may be raised and discussed anonymously at the biannual Partnership Board held between the senior leadership team of the Trust and UEA School of Health Sciences.
What happens next?
You will normally be informed of planned actions and the outcome unless this involves sensitive information which cannot be shared.
If you believe your concern has not been handled appropriately or the concern remains unresolved, you can raise this directly with the Director of Practice Education via email on hsc.practiceeducation@uea.ac.uk.
Purple Flag
The Purple Flag online alert system has been created for staff and learners to raise concerns about any aspect of their placement learning. If you choose to report your concern via the Purple Flag system, we encourage you also to report your concern via the processes outlined here so we can escalate and address them as quickly as possible.