Every sign-off made by the right person

Every organisation has its own rules about who can assess and sign off clinical learning. Compassly applies your rules each time someone assesses, marks or signs off, and records who did it, so assurance becomes part of everyday practice.

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Your rules, applied every time

Who should sign off a competency depends on what it covers. In Compassly you decide who can assess and mark each stage and who gives the final sign-off, and every sign-off is checked against those rules as it happens. A common example is that any trained assessor can assess a formative practical, while only educators or senior nurses assess the summative stage and sign the competency off.

Most competencies need nothing extra, because Supervisors assess the people in their own teams. You add rules only where a competency calls for them, so governance is as light or as tight as each one needs.

Where a competency needs more than one signature, as many organisations require for advanced practice or prescribing, Compassly can ask a specialist to sign off the part in their area and a senior lead to give the final sign-off. Your organisation keeps the lists of who can do each, and can update them in the app as people train, move or leave.

Supervisors who stay current

You can make a Supervisor's own record part of the rule, so they must hold a valid competency themselves, either the same one or an assessor competency, before they can assess or sign off anyone else. If their own competency expires, so does their ability to sign others off until they renew it, which gives you a constant assurance check without anyone having to remember it.

Building on the basics

Some competencies only make sense once others are in place. Competency authors can make a competency wait for others, such as no aseptic procedures until aseptic non-touch technique (ANTT) is signed off and still valid, so skills build in a safe order without anyone having to check.

Within a competency, they can also set the order of the stages, so learning comes before the practical assessment and declarations are made by the right people in the right order.

A second look before failing

When a result would fail the whole competency, Compassly can hold it for review first. A senior colleague then confirms the fail or gives the person another attempt, so a slip such as a misread question on a final attempt is treated fairly. Competency authors decide whether to use this for each competency, so an automatic fail stays where that is the right rule.

Clear roles for preceptorship

Preceptorship and other programmes of development have roles of their own. Programme Leads keep the list of approved preceptors, and only approved preceptors can be assigned, so every preceptee is supported by someone ready for the role.

Your organisation decides, stage by stage, what preceptees, approved preceptors and Programme Leads can each do, so some stages can be kept for leads alone.

Read about Programmes

Control over the detail

Governance also lives in the detail, and each of these controls is set by your organisation or your competency authors.

Permissions by role. Each person's access level decides what they can do, from assessing colleagues to adding people and running the organisation. Your organisation can switch individual permissions on or off for each role.

Learning already achieved. When someone has already completed something, a Supervisor can record it with the date it was actually done, so experienced staff don't repeat what they have already shown and renewals fall due at the right time. You can keep this for senior or specific roles, separately for competencies, programmes and milestones.

Expiry and completion due dates. An expiry date can be brought forward but never pushed beyond the period its competency author set, and completion due dates can be locked or changed only by the roles you choose. Every change is recorded with who made it and when.

Supervision across teams. Supervisors can scan a colleague's Compassly QR code to open their record straight away, so supervision can follow the work through cover shifts, rotations or a specialist visiting from another ward.

A record you can audit

Compassly keeps an audit trail for every record, showing who assessed, marked and signed off each stage and when, and it can be viewed in the app. Nobody can sign off their own work, approve their own evidence or raise their own access, so your records stand up to scrutiny at any audit or inspection.

Supervisors can also see each competency's version history, with every published version, its date and what changed.

Who can use it

Governance controls are available to organisations with their own Compassly licence. Organisations using the UKONS SACT Competency Passport or the BOPA SACT Verification Passport free of charge can add them as a paid add-on.

Always improving

We're always releasing improvements to Compassly. These release notes cover the features on this page:

All release notes

v2.1Competency sign-off and optional stages
formal sign-off, with who signs off set by each organisation v2.2Practice attempts, stage order and prerequisites
stage order and prerequisite competencies v2.6Supervisor-chosen stages and question pools
bringing an expiry date forward v2.8Completion due dates and people without job descriptions
locking and changing completion due dates v3.5Pending fail review before a competency fails
a second look before failing v3.7Supervisor controls, registration numbers and competency tags
sign-off rules and Supervisors who must hold a competency v4.1Programme leads, completion dates and CSV export
the real completion date and supervision across teams v4.2Programme notifications and cohort reporting
permissions by role, programme roles and version history

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