The placement checklist ensures that the objectives and parameters of placement are understood by the student and clinical supervisor. 

To pass this assessment you need to communicate effectively with your supervisor that during the placement you need to complete a practical assessment, global assessment of professional attributes (GAPA) at mid and end point of placement and  clinical logbook/attendance form. You will need to have your supervisor read through applicable documents and sign off your checklist to confirm that they will be your supervisor. 

PRACTICAL ASSESSMENT

A key part of being a sonographer is your ability to perform a sonographic examination. In your MEDS12004 unit, you demonstrated advanced beginner level in your Sonographic Skills Development 1 assessment on normal volunteers. In this unit, you are required to achieve a beginner level of competence on your first placement in a clinical setting, with the emphasis on patient care and team work.

Assessment Task:

In consultation with your clinical supervisor, you will pick ONE of the following examinations:

• Abdominal
• Renal
• Female pelvis (TA and/or TV)
• Thyroid

Discuss the best time to complete this practical assessment with your clinical supervisor. For this task, you will be assessed on your ability to interact and communicate with the patient and multidisciplinary team for the ultrasound examination. You will attempt to perform a portion of the ultrasound examination under the guidance of your supervisor.

This task will be assessed using the marking guidelines and scoring sheet criterion. This document is available on the unit Moodle site and is outlined in the practical assessment clinical document form. A copy of your practical assessment form has been emailed to your clinical site but it is advisable for you to provide a printed copy to your clinical supervisor at commencement of your placement and/or on the day of the assessment.

If you do not meet the required standard on your first attempt, you must seek detailed feedback from your assessor so you can develop a strategy to improve your performance. You should share your plan for improvement with your assessor. You may then re-attempt this assessment once and must achieve the required level. Your clinical supervisor must complete and sign the assessment form before you submit it through the assessment block in the unit Moodle site.

The assessment criteria will address the following areas:

• Knowledge of instrumentation including optimisation of survey and images through appropriate selection of parameters and technique 
• Interrogation of anatomy and acquisition of relevant images to demonstrate diagnostic sufficiency and completeness of the information obtained
• Recognition and understanding of the relevant anatomy and pathology demonstrated 
• Ability to recognise the need to and extend the clinical examination where appropriate
• Accurate documentation and communication of findings
• Occupational health and safety
• Infection control

Throughout your placement block, you are expected to adhere closely to the attendance requirements arranged with your clinical supervisor.

Assessment Task:

It is expected that you attend 100% of the 5 week clinical placement to achieve a pass in this assessment.

The placement allocations and dates may be subject to change depending on the Covid-19 situation. All hours worked must be entered into the clinical attendance form. This form must be verified and signed by the clinical supervisor, or a sonographer/radiologist, or by an obstetrician, vascular surgeon or physician that has undertaken appropriate ultrasound qualifications. 

A copy of the form has been emailed to the clinical site. Please also print this form and read it carefully to understand the criteria of the requirements throughout the clinical placement.

Public holidays are included as hours worked and can be logged as 8 hours worked for each public holiday. At any instance you are unable to attend placement, you must supply a verifiable supporting document indicating why you have not attended. Both the clinical supervisor and the unit coordinator must be informed of any absences from your clinical placement and must be made up after negotiation with the clinical site. A medical certificate or supporting documentation must be supplied as per the Clinical Handbook.

For this clinical placement, you are required to record all ultrasound examinations you have either completed, partially performed or observed. The clinical logbook serves as a record of depth and breadth of experience attained during the placement. It shows your skill development within and across examination types.

Each case will be categorised into one of the following areas:

• Abdomen
• Renal
• Superficial structures (thyroid, testes, lumps etc)
• Breast
• Obstetrics (first, second and third trimester) & Gynaecology
• Vascular (carotid, DVT and other)
• Musculoskeletal

Each week the logbook must be signed by the clinical site supervisor, radiologist or a sonographer delegated by the clinical supervisor.

To pass this assessment you must have a minimum of 176 hours of attendance documented on the clinical attendance form. This is required to be uploaded on the Moodle assessments section.

You will pass this assessment once you have logged a minimum of 5 scans in any one of the logbook categories (abdominal, renal, female pelvis TA and/or TV or thyroid) by the end of the placement. Detailed instructions will be provided on Moodle. If students are unable to log the minimum of 5 scans on any of the categories listed above (due to specialist clinical placement), continue to record and log studies (following clinical logbook instructions) and contact the unit coordinator to discuss further options.

You are about to enter the clinical environment for your first clinical placement to continue your preparation for your future as a sonographer. Qualified sonographers use experiential and knowledge-based clinical intuition to assist in making clinical decisions. This helps them decide things such as what questions to ask during history taking, where to focus their scan, how to extend the scan, what images to record and what to highlight in their report. You are going to begin the process of developing this clinical decision making capacity in this assessment.

Kerry Thoirs and Jenny Sims, two well-respected educators in imaging, have adapted a clinical decision-making framework to support student sonographers to develop clinical decision making skills and structure clinical learning. This assessment requires you to complete a clinical case report on an ultrasound examination that you have either performed, or taken part in, while undertaking this clinical unit. You are going to produce a clinical case report in the style described by Thoirs and Sims in their published article ‘Using a clinical decision-making framework to foster sonographer student learning in the clinical setting’. Using this framework will give you a chance to appraise your professional performance including sonographic knowledge, technical skill, professionalism, teamwork, communication skills and safe clinical practice to identify goals for continuing professional development.

The following section will detail the template outline for the clinical case report.

Task

Using the headings below fill out details of a scan. It will be structured to include five components:

• Information gathering around the patient presentation;
• Hypothesis generation – the making of a tentative diagnosis based on the information gained in the previous component;
• Sonographic assessment to gather further information;
• The combination and cognitive synthesis of previous components to make a sonographic diagnosis; and
• Reflection and consolidation of learning from the case.

The full article is included on the unit Moodle site for you to read and refer to. 

• Ability to recognise pathology and normal findings
• Discuss clinical associations 
• Provide possible diagnosis and differential diagnosis to demonstrate problem-solving
• Critically reflect on your images to assess sonographic knowledge and technical skills 
• Provide examples of professionalism, communication skills and team working ability to demonstrate critical thinking 
• Referencing

Students must meet the 'requirements met' score in all areas of the marking rubric. In the event that the first submission does not meet minimum requirements as per the rubric, students will be provided with feedback and guidance by the unit coordinator. Furthermore, the students will then have an opportunity to revise and resubmit the report within one week of receiving feedback.

Clinical placement occurs in the professional workplace. As a sonography student, you are provided access to that workplace on the condition that you can demonstrate the behaviour and attributes of a healthcare professional and, present a positive image to the clinical facility's staff and patients. As a student in the medical sonography profession you are required to comply with the Code of Conduct for Medical Sonographers.

Clinical sites mention professional behaviour, particularly teamwork and empathy, as paramount in their decision to employ a sonographer. This assessment considers your ability to communicate professionally with a diverse cultural audience of patients, staff and the general public, demonstrate professional respect for all and function as a reliable, well-organised member of the healthcare team. 

The allocated clinical supervisor or delegate will be working in the sonography area, directly observing your day-to-day performance. These observations and collected feedback are related to your demonstrated knowledge, skills and behaviours over a span of time, and not limited to a particular scan type or patient case. The observations and feedback are then used to complete the Global Assessment of Professional Attributes (GAPA) form provided.

A GAPA must be completed at the mid point and at the end of your placement. The mid GAPA should be completed by the Friday of your 3rd week of placement and your supervisor should email this directly to the Unit Coordinator. You also need to upload a copy to Moodle by 8pm (local time to you) on the Friday of your 3rd week. Your end GAPA should be completed in your final days of placement and you must upload this to Moodle by 5pm AEST on the Monday after completing your placement (there is no need for your supervisor to email the end GAPA). 

There are three main sections to the GAPA form:

• Section 1: Applied Knowledge 
• Section 2: Psychomotor Skills (scanning skills) and Standard of Work
• Section 3: Professionalism

In each section, there are multiple observable behaviours that you are required to demonstrate throughout placement. The assessor will score your performance based on how frequently and to what extent you demonstrate each of the listed behaviours. The assessor is also encouraged to provide comments to expand on the scoring feedback.

The GAPA form (including marking criteria) are available in the assessment block on Moodle. A copy has been emailed to your clinical site but it is advisable to provide a printed copy to your clinical supervisor at the commencement of your placement. Please print this form and read it carefully to understand the criteria your professional behavior will be evaluated on.

The clinical supervisor (or designated assessor) will meet you after completing each assessment to discuss it in detail. This discussion is your opportunity to get clarification on any score or comment on the assessment. You should also write down a brief summary of the discussion. Further, you need to ensure that each complete assessment form has all required documentation, including the name, dated signature and registration number of the allocated assessor. The supervisor will provide you a copy of the completed assessment form and you will then scan it and upload the file onto Moodle. 

It is your responsibility to ensure that the clinical supervisor is reminded at least 3 days prior to the assessment that it needs to be done, and book a meeting with them toward the end of the week that the assessment is due. This gives the supervisor the opportunity to collect feedback and to designate an alternate assessor if they will not be available.

If there are extenuating circumstances at the clinical facility that prevent you from being assessed during the required week, you must contact the unit coordinator that week at the latest. This will require obtaining approval for an assessment extension.

It is your responsibility to ensure you have regular access to the technology needed to upload your assessment by the submission due dates. In the absence of an approved assessment extension, if you have not met all the requirements listed in the Assessment Criteria section by the stated due dates, you will fail this assessment and fail this subject.

On the occasion that clinical sites inform us of student behaviours which either compromise the reputation of the site and/or University, or compromise patient/staff safety and/or wellbeing, then the placement allocation will be cancelled due to the nature of the incident. Students will then need to discuss this further with the unit coordinator and the Head of Course. This may result in student behavioural misconduct procedures in line with the Central Queensland University Student Behavioural Misconduct Procedure. 

The criteria for this assessment is detailed on the GAPA form in the form of required behaviours and attributes. The assessor will use the stated limited to level 3 scale to indicate the frequency and extent to which you demonstrate each of those. The required behaviours and attributes are grouped in 3 sections, each with their own minimum required scores.

For Section 1: Applied Knowledge:

• The student must achieve level 1 or above in all areas.

For Section 2: Psychomotor Skills (scanning skills) and Standard of Work:

• The student must achieve level 1 or above in all areas.

For Section 3, Professionalism:

• The student must achieve level 1 or above in all areas.

In order to achieve an overall grade of 'Pass' in this assessment task, you must:

• Undergo end-of-placement assessments by the due dates listed
• Meet the minimum required scores in all three sections
• Ensure the documentation of each assessment is complete
• Upload each completed assessment form and submit on Moodle

If the minimum required scores in the GAPA are not met, the student will be regarded as a 'Student At Risk'. The unit coordinator will contact the student to advise the risk of failing MEDS12007 and provide formative feedback. The student must respond to this email that they understand the implications of this information, and provide details of their plans for immediate improvement.

Occasionally a student's behaviour is beyond acceptable risk to clinical sites. Clinical supervisors will contact CQUniversity academics immediately if an incident occurs. A GAPA assessment is requested at this time (which can be at any time during your placement). If the outcome of this GAPA is unsatisfactory, and/or the site feedback indicates that they can no longer host the student due to the risk incurred, then this one GAPA alone, or site refusal to host, will constitute a fail for MEDS12007. Where such risk exists, the student's placement will terminate immediately. It is difficult to place such students in the clinical environment further and their continued progress within the sonography course may be at risk.