Fitness to practice and feedback to students: A literature review

In the United Kingdom (UK), the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) stipulate that practice experience makes up 50% of the nursing curricula. We argue that mentors play a pivotal role in this experience, being the main practitioner responsible for supporting learning in practice, and the NMC's framework to support learning and assessment in practice establishes the knowledge and skills that mentors must apply in practice with students. This framework acts as a resource guide to mentors on how to successfully facilitate students clinical learning experiences, ensuring that students are “fit to practice” at the point of registration. It is recognised, therefore, that it is the mentor's responsibility, once in practice, to bridge the gap between that which students are taught in the classroom, and their actual application to practice. This paper aims to undertake an analysis of the available literature on how effective feedback from mentors to students can help to ensure this fitness to practice.