Providing feedback to students has an important and powerful part to play in any future learning. Constructive and timely feedback can support the development of mastery in a subject; helping students to make sense of their achievements, take ownership of their learning, support a student’s motivation to move forward and increase self-esteem and confidence (Race 2014). Nowhere is this more important than in the feedback that mentors provide to students on their performance in practice settings. Mentor feedback not only acknowledges student achievement and feeds into future development, but more crucially supports assessment processes designed to safeguard the public and uphold the reputation of the profession (Wells & McLaughlin 2014). However, a longstanding discourse exists identifying difficulties experienced by mentors in providing feedback, as well as inconsistencies or failures by mentors to provide feedback identifying deficiencies or supporting processes to fail a student (Duffy 2013). Given the continuing nature of this discourse, especially with respect to mentor written feedback in student assessment documentation, and the expectation that mentors be professionally accountable for providing students with constructive feedback on their achievements (Duffy 2013), a workshop was developed to support neophyte mentors to develop their written feedback skills. Following theoretical input on feedback principles, trainee mentors were provided with real world vignettes of student cases including mentor documented feedback to review, using a structured feedback development tool. Evaluation of the workshop revealed specific learning and improved confidence in mentor ability to provide constructive and specific feedback to students in practice settings. This concurrent session will provide a brief overview of the context of the workshop and evaluation of mentor learning occurring as a result. In particular, the session will adopt a participatory and interactive approach to enable the audience to sample a workshop vignette, use the mentor feedback development tool and consider ways to improve written feedback in their own practice settings.
ORCID: 
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)