Interprofessional Learning Programme
Level: Six – Honours
Subject: IPL – The Professional in the Team
Weighting of assignment: 100%
Date set: 17th March 2017
Final date for submission: 12th May 2017 by 12noon
Students should submit one electronic copy via Learn. (Students are advised to keep their own copy of the work).
The report should be double spaced, size 12 font and have the student number and course title in the document footer.
Cheating and plagiarism are serious in nature. All submitted work will be checked using the plagiarism software.
Any piece of assessed work which breaches the Confidentiality Guidelines will automatically be referred.
Required Length: 3000 words
Students should aim to keep within ± 10% of the required word length or the work may be referred. (The actual word count should be stated clearly on the title page.)
All work should be accurately referenced using the University of Suffolk Harvard system.
Title: Individual Report on a Service Issue
Introduction: This assignment is designed to allow individual students to select a service issue relevant to their practice and, in the context of that issue, to:
- Appraise current health and/or social care policy and its impact on the service issue identified in practice.
- Analyse the management of change within the context of professional cultures.
- Critically evaluate the contribution of themselves and others to interprofessional practice.
- Consider the potential impact of evolving service provision on the user experience.
Aims:
- To enable students to analyse the effective management of self and others within a professional culture.
- To develop critical appreciation of the service users holistic experiences within an interprofessional context.
- To construct a lucid, precise and systematic report relating to improvements in service provision.
Content: In planning your report you first need to consider the purpose of the report, for example, is it to:
- give information about working to a specified National Service Framework or other guidelines
- put forward ideas to improve some aspect of service provision
- recommend a course of action to solve a problem e.g. improve on a specified performance indicator
- evaluate a change in practice?
The report should be written as if for the line manager of a neophyte practitioner but assuming an interprofessional readership; thus some shared professional knowledge base may be assumed.
The structure of the report should include:
| Title page
| Module title. Student ID number Title of your report. Date of submission (Month & Year). Actual word count. |
| Contents list
| Numbers and lists of all sections and subsection headings with page numbers, commencing from Terms of reference section. |
| *Terms of reference | Objective of the study stated clearly and concisely; this defines the limits of your topic. |
| *Executive summary | Précis or synopsis of the whole report including important features, results and conclusions. |
| *Introduction | Reason for the study; background information to bring the reader up-to-date; brief discussion of approach/methodology i.e. the way the topic of the report is to be treated. |
| *Main body | Divided into numbered and headed sections to separate the main issues/themes into a logical order. Presents relevant data or evidence, discussion, reflection and analysis. |
| *Conclusions
| A short, logical summary of the theme(s) developed in the main text. |
| *Recommendations | May be for personal development and service related. |
| Reference list
| All sources must be acknowledged using the Harvard system |
| Glossary of terms | May include operational definitions, procedural terms and abbreviations as necessary. |
| Appendices
| (If appropriate) Should not contain material essential to understanding the report but useful material for an interested reader |
*NB Only the sections listed in *bold above are included in the word count.
Criteria for Assessment and weighting:
| 1. Identify specified service issue involving improvement in provision | Is the purpose of the report clear? Is the issue relevant to current and future practice?
| 10% |
| 2. Discuss chosen issue from various stakeholders perspectives (2 other stakeholders e.g. Oncologist and Chemotherapy nurses or service users) | Have the service users and all other relevant interested parties been identified?
| 15% |
| 3. Critically analyse the issues identified in a clear, concise and effective manner, in relation to module content | Are facts accurate and opinions clearly differentiated from facts? Is evidence simply described or critically analysed?
| 30% |
| 4. Demonstrate an ability to critically evaluate their contribution and that of others in relation to interprofessional practice | Is there evidence of evaluation? Do conclusions and recommendations arise from the data analysed or evidence presented?
|
30% |
| 5. Presentation, grammar and referencing skills consistent with (Honours) level 3 criteria | Is the report coherently ordered and are all relevant sections included? Are appropriate sub-headings used and information allocated to the correct section? Can the reader find relevant information using the contents page and cross-referencing? Are all sources acknowledged accurately? Has confidentiality been breached? | 15% |
Other Information: Students must adhere to the confidentiality guidelines and if local statistics are presented these must either be in the public domain or anonymised.
Graduate Key Skills
Successful completion of this assignment will provide you with the opportunity to achieve some or all the following Graduate Key Skills:
| Communication | Numeracy | Information technology | Problem solving |
| C1 | N2 | IT1 | PS1 |
| C2 | N3 | IT2 | |
| C3 | |||
| C4 |
Presentation of Assignments:
- The work should be presented double line spaced, using 12 point font.
- Please ensure that your student number and course title appears in the footer of the work.
- Harvard referencing conventions are to be adhered to.
- Work must be handed in electronically no paper copies.


