BPCLE Indicators - Data Collection and Reporting Updates

This section provides periodic updates on data collection or reporting for individual indicators. The information displayed below is correct as of 26 October 2015.

Indicators marked as 'external' are externally reportable by Victorian public health services to the Victorian Department of Health.

• This indicator seeks to determine the proportion of staff involved in all clinical education activities (that is, for both professional-entry students and early graduates) that have educational training, experience or qualifications.
• Rather than defining specific courses, qualifications or experience as having greater value than others, it is recommended that health services record all information that aligns with the definitions provided in the data entry form for this indicator.
• The capacity to report this data will depend on the health service’s existing collection of this information. If your health service does not currently collect this information, it is recommended that you focus on staff with primary involvement in clinical education activities and smaller disciplines in the first instance.

Indicator 30 has been removed as an externally reportable indicator for Victoria's public health services for the 2015 reporting period.

• This indicator seeks to quantify the number of learners in the clinical unit each day (or week) and the number of clinical educators assigned to those learners/learner groups. This information will help to contextualise the perceptions of learners about their access to clinical educators (Indicator 29). BPCLEtool requires organisations to submit the highest and lowest ratio of learners to educators over the reporting period.
• The BPCLE Resource Kit provides a template to manually record this data (within the BPCLEtool Indicator Data Collector). However, for organisations and disciplines using viCPlace, this data is automatically captured through student rosters. The department has developed a viCPlace report to automatically extract the ratio of learners to educators, thus removing the need for manual data collection using the BPCLEtool Indicator Data Collector. This report is now available.
• In calculating this ratio, health services should include the educator who is designated with primary responsibility for the learner while they are on placement. Health services should note that the ratio may vary depending on the clinical supervision model employed (i.e 1:8 where there is a clinical educator employed or 1:1 where there is no clinical educator). Health services can document the supervision model in the notes section. NOTE: The major focus of this indicator is on ratios for clinical activities and therefore ratios applying to non-clinical activities (such as tutorials, lectures, workshops, etc) should not be included.
• While the BPCLE Framework focuses on both professional-entry students and early graduates, health services are required to only report the ratio of learners to educators for professional-entry students, to enable statewide comparisons for this indicator. The inclusion of data collection and reporting functionality for other learners may be considered at a later point.

• This indicator acknowledges that while it may be possible to have an effective health service-education provider relationship without the existence of a formal relationship agreement, the increasing complexity and demands for organising and delivering clinical placements are challenging ad-hoc arrangements that have worked in the past.
• The Victorian Clinical Training Council has established the Relationship Agreement Advisory Group to inform and guide a review of the template Relationship Agreement for the Public Hospital Sector for the purpose of developing a template Clinical Placement Agreement.
• The current reporting tool requires a health service to report:
  • where a relationship agreement(s) exists, and
  • whether that relationship agreement(s) includes key performance indicators (KPIs).
• Health services need to report, as a minimum, where a relationship agreement exists. If the relationship agreement does not include KPIs covering resources, induction and orientation, health services may wish to include a note that future relationship agreements will be updated when the statewide student placement agreement template is available.