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HEIW's Michala Deakin wins 2024 National Inspire! Tutor Award

Published 4 April 2024

Michala Deakin, Assessor and Tutor for Internal Quality Assurers at Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW) has won the 2024 National Inspire! Tutor Award.

The coveted award recognises Michala’s exceptional work, effort, and commitment to developing and supporting high standards of quality assurance training for Assessors and Quality Assurers across NHS Wales.

She was awarded the accolade on Tuesday 12 March at the Senedd.

In NHS Wales, Assessors and Quality Assurers play a vital role in ensuring quality work-based learning for clinical and non-clinical staff across healthcare disciplines.

In her role at HEIW, Michala is responsible for supporting the assessment, training, and mentoring of Assessors and Quality Assurers to ensure their approach to quality assurance is consistent and fair for all learners.

Her achievements include:

  • developing and implementing a standardised, all-Wales approach for the following qualifications: Level 3 Assessor CAVA (Certificate in Assessing Vocational Achievement) and Level 4 AIQA (Award in the Internal Quality Assurance of Assessment Processes and Practices)
  • setting up a Wales-wide, quality assurance peer network to encourage members to share best practice.
  • creating a suite of online, innovative resources for Assessors and Quality Assurer trainees to access at any time to support continued professional development. These resources include animations, training modules and toolkits.
  • mentoring and ensuring the wellbeing of all Assessors and Quality Assurers trainees through ongoing support and feedback.

As a result, Michala has helped to strengthen and streamline the delivery of Assessors and Quality Assurers training across NHS Wales, leading to an increase in the number across NHS Wales.

Robert Ledsam, HCSW Clinical Skills Tutor, Culture and Organisational Development at Cardiff and Vale University Health Board, said:

“Where Michala has mentored staff through this new process of assessment and delivery, we are now seeing an improved assessment submission rate of over 80%. Previously the submission was as low as 20%.”

Michala said: “Tutoring and mentoring is important to me as it allows me to ensure that staff are equipped with the tools they need to their job, and to do it well. I was honoured to be nominated for the Inspire! Tutor Award for 2024, so to be selected as winner was the icing on the cake.”

Held annually, the National Inspire! Tutor Awards are coordinated by the Learning and Work Institute in partnership with the Welsh Government, and are supported by National Training Federation Wales, Colleges Wales, Adult Learning Wales Partnership and Universities Wales.