BCCNM's self-assessment is the starting place of the annual PPR cycle. Anchored in BCCNM standards of practice, the self-assessment supports nurses or midwives to assess and reflect on professional behaviours that are at the heart of competent practice, including responsibility and accountability, collaboration and teamwork, communication and professionalism.
This reflection can be as simple as analyzing a situation with a challenging client or thinking about how to apply a new communication strategy they learned at a lunch-and-learn session.
A formal approach
There is also value in approaching self-assessment in a structured way. To support this strategy, nurses and midwives registered with BCCNM complete an annual self-assessment questionnaire.
The questionnaire is based on the ethical and practice standards (LPN,
NP,
RN,
RPN,
midwife) relevant to their designation and is an opportunity to complete a thorough assessment of their practice.
Why a questionnaire?
The self-assessment questionnaire encourages nurses and midwives to think about how effectively they are meeting their professional standards. This questionnaire also forms the basis of the colleague questionnaire, which is completed by licensees' colleagues when they participate in multisource feedback.
Continuous professional development
Nurses and midwives continue this reflection throughout the year by focusing on the standards that have specific relevance to their practice. For instance, a nurse working on a new unit with an unfamiliar charting system may review the
Documentation practice standard to ensure they are familiar with the principles. A midwife might refer to the
Midwives: Medical Records practice standard to ensure her recordkeeping meets standards.
The questionnaires
It's a good idea to review the self-assessment questionnaires early in the year, as a first step in the PPR process. Practitioners should reflect on what areas of their practice they would like to focus on when setting their professional development goals for the year.
Nurses who work more than 50% of their time in clinical areas should select the clinical questionnaire; those who don't should choose the non-clinical. All midwives complete the same questionnaire. The questionnaires provided here are for
reference only—self-assessment occurs as part of the PPR process.