One capital, one standard: PLPLG moves to the latest MyProgress practice learning workflows
The Pan London Practice Learning Group (PLPLG) has moved to the latest MyProgress practice learning workflows across its approved education institutions. The change introduces:
A new way of storing practice hours records in an immutable audit ledger: it’s now easier to look behind the timesheet dashboard and see where or when the record has been corrected or altered
Enhanced verification of student practice hours, with secure approval by authenticated supervisors in practice
New secure and auditable ways to easily manage simulated hours
Configurable soft and hard limits on hours, ensuring data isn’t inadvertently entered in the wrong place and that students are not overworking to an extent that impacts their education
New dashboards for staff and students giving insight into patterns of attendance and absence
Taken together, these changes give universities continuous assurance and give practice staff across London a faster route to sign-off.
In short:
Who: PLPLG, a collaboration of approved education institutions (AEIs) in London and beyond, together with their NHS and independent practice partners.
What changed: The latest MyProgress workflows for the Pan London ePAD (electronic Practice Assessment Document) and eMORA (electronic Midwifery Ongoing Record of Achievement).
The five mechanisms: an immutable ledger, enhanced verification of practice hours, new bulk hours import for administrators managing simulated hours, soft and hard hour limits, and live student and cohort dashboards.
Why it matters: practice hours and proficiency sign-offs are regulatory evidence under the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) Standards for student supervision and assessment (SSSA).
What is the Pan London Practice Learning Group?
The Pan London Practice Learning Group (PLPLG) is a collaboration of 16 approved education institutions that standardises practice learning documentation for nursing, nursing associate, SCPHN and midwifery students across London. PLPLG maintains the Pan London Practice Assessment Document (PLPAD) and the Midwifery Ongoing Record of Achievement (MORA), and their electronic equivalents, the ePAD and eMORA, which run on MyProgress.
The purpose is consistency. A student on placement in London should have the same assessment experience whichever university enrolled them, and a practice supervisor should not have to learn a different system for every student who walks onto the ward. A single ward manager in a London trust may be supervising students from five or six different universities in the same month.
What has changed in the latest MyProgress workflows?
PLPLG's move involves the London-wide adoption of some features that have been available in MyProgress for some time, as well as new features, and the real challenge has been around managing change across all of the nursing and midwifery providers in London. The latest workflows tighten the assurance around practice hours and proficiency sign-off while reducing the number of steps practice staff have to complete.
What is an immutable ledger, and why does the practice hours record need one?
An immutable ledger is a record store in which entries are never overwritten or deleted. In MyProgress, every time a student records practice hours, every time a nurse, midwife or educator in practice approves or amends them, every time an administrator or tutor adds simulated hours or amends mistakes that will inevitably happen from time to time, the activity is written to this ledger. A correction does not replace the original: it creates a new, timestamped version alongside it, attributed to the person who made the change, with the prior state still readable.
This is important because practice assessment documentation is regulatory evidence. Under the Nursing and Midwifery Council's Standards for student supervision and assessment, the audit question is never simply did the student meet their practice hours requirement, it is where did this happen, who confirmed it, in what role, on what date, and on what basis. The implications if mistakes are made can be serious and could potentially involve graduates having to come back from their employment into training placements to make up any shortfall.
For a programme lead preparing for an NMC monitoring visit or an internal periodic review, an immutable ledger changes the shape of the task. There is no reconstruction exercise, no chasing a supervisor who has since moved trust, and no gap where a paper document went missing between placements. The chain of custody for every authorisation of practice hours already exists, and it is the same chain across all PLPLG institutions.
"Implemented across 16 London universities, the ePAD provides a robust, transparent, and efficient process for verifying practice hours and managing any necessary amendments" - Justin McDermott, Senior Lecturer (Practice Based Learning co-ordinator), Middlesex University
How does verification of practice hours work?
Enhanced verification means a student's practice hours are entered by the student with an approver's name and email address associated with them. At this stage, they do not count toward the programme total, but are visible and reportable as unverified hours. The authorised practice member responsible for verifying that the student attended practice during the period being approved receives notifications and reminders both by email and when they log into the MyProgress ePAD to supervise or assess students. Nothing accrues on a student's own assertion alone.
Practice hours are the most audited numbers in an NMC-regulated pre-registration programme and historically the most fragile. Under previous paper and hybrid arrangements, a student's hours could rest on a single signature at the end of a shift — sometimes given retrospectively, sometimes captured on a scanned page. MyProgress has always had robust processes for verifying student practice hours, but during the transition from paper there was some leeway for nurses in practice to sign things off via email alone. Now that the PLPLG's ePAD and eMORA is mature and nurses and midwives across London are accustomed to supporting students in an intuitive online system, it was an ideal time to adapt some of the more advanced validation available in MyProgress.
For practice education teams, verification becomes a short, structured action rather than a favour asked at the end of a long shift. Practice staff self-register if they've not used MyProgress before, are linked to the student at the start of a placement or when they begin supporting the student in practice, are matched to their placement area, and see only the submissions that are theirs to confirm. Practice Education Facilitators in the Trusts have a management view of what is happening in their areas. The administrative work that used to fall on placement offices such as reconciling timesheets, resolving disputed weeks, tracking down signatures, reduces to exception handling.
What are soft and hard limits on practice hours?
Soft limits flag unusual hours for review; hard limits prevent an entry being submitted at all. MyProgress supports both, because not every hours rule is the same kind of rule.
Soft limits flag, and do not block. A shift longer than expected, an unusual pattern of night duty, or a week that runs beyond a placement's planned allocation surfaces as a prompt to the student and a flag to the practice education team. There may well be a good reason; the point is that someone looks.
Hard limits enforce. Where a constraint is a genuine requirement — working time boundaries, maximum hours claimable against a single placement, or thresholds that would put a submission outside programme rules — the entry is not accepted.
This distinction matters most to practice partners. A system that blocks everything creates workarounds. A system that blocks nothing recreates the reconciliation problem at the end of the year. Setting threshold behaviour deliberately, and consistently across the Pan London footprint, is what makes 2,300 practice hours an auditable figure rather than an aspirational one.
What do MyProgress student dashboards show?
MyProgress student dashboards give a live view of hours accrued against target, proficiencies achieved, outstanding sign-offs and upcoming deadlines. Students do not wait for a tutorial to find out where they stand.
The oversight the dashboards give staff is arguably the bigger change. Personal tutors, link lecturers and practice education facilitators can view a whole cohort at a glance and identify the student who is three weeks behind on hours, or who has had no proficiency signed in a fortnight, while there is still time to act. Intervention moves from end-of-placement to mid-placement.
What does this mean for practice partners and universities?
For practice partners and placement teams: a smaller, clearer job. Verify what is yours, when it suits you, on a phone, with no ambiguity about what you are confirming.
For university programme and assessment leads: assurance that is continuous rather than retrospective, and consistent across every institution in the group.
For students: a record of their practice learning that is complete, current, and genuinely theirs.
MyProgress is used by more than 50% of UK nursing and midwifery students. To see how the latest MyProgress practice learning workflows could work for your programmes, contact us to book a demo.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Pan London Practice Learning Group (PLPLG)?
PLPLG is a collaboration of 16 approved education institutions in London and beyond that standardises practice learning documentation for nursing, nursing associate, SCPHN and midwifery students. It maintains the Pan London Practice Assessment Document and the Midwifery Ongoing Record of Achievement, and their electronic versions, the ePAD and eMORA.
What is the difference between an ePAD and an eMORA?
The ePAD is the electronic Practice Assessment Document used for nursing, nursing associate and SCPHN programmes. The eMORA is the electronic Midwifery Ongoing Record of Achievement, used for pre-registration midwifery programmes. Both run on MyProgress across PLPLG institutions.
How many practice hours does a pre-registration nursing student need?
NMC standards require 2,300 practice hours across a pre-registration nursing programme, alongside 2,300 theory hours.
How does verification of practice hours work?
Students enter their hours naming an approver. Those hours are visible and reportable as unverified, but do not count toward the programme total until the authorised practice member verifies that the student attended. Hours never accrue on a student's assertion alone.
Can practice supervisors use MyProgress without a university login?
Yes. Practice staff self-register, are matched to their placement area, and see only the students and submissions relevant to them.
Does MyProgress work without an internet connection?
Yes. Assessments and activity records can be captured offline and sync when a connection returns — designed for community placements, home births and areas of poor signal.
How does an immutable ledger help with NMC monitoring?
Because no record is overwritten, every sign-off retains its author, role, timestamp and version history. Evidence for a monitoring visit or periodic review is already assembled rather than reconstructed after the fact.
