The Nurse Mentor′s Companion

Kim Craig, Barbara Smith

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781473910553
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Nursing

This is a new highly practical guide to doing mentoring in practice. It explains how to support student nurses from the day that they arrive on placement in six straightforward, concise and clear chapters.

The book is packed full of resources and learning features, including:

• Action plans for managing your student
• Checklists of resources you will need
• Tips for best practice
• Case studies covering all fields of nursing
• Reflective questions which challenge you to question your assumptions.

Chapters are tied closely to the NMC standards, and cover essential topics including assessment, the role of the sign-off mentor and team-working.

The Nurse Mentor's Companion is valuable reading for all nurses taking mentoring courses across the UK, and as they go on to mentor in practice.

1 A Guide to Mentoring

Introduction

The main aim of this chapter is to assist you in your role as a mentor by outlining your roles and responsibilities as well as signposting you to some of the relevant documents and research. You need to think about how you can make the learning experience for your student nurse a useful and relevant one. It is about making the placement one where the student is an active participant in the process, because this is where the student learns about being a health professional.

This chapter will cover:

• What is a mentor?
• Your role as a mentor
• Why are clinical placements important?
• Designing an effective placement
• Learning resources
• Planning: From day one when your student nurse arrives
• The placement as a learning environment
• Interviews with your student nurse
• Assessing your student

What is a Mentor?

Mentors are an essential part of any training; a ‘good’ mentor is a star, someone who can be remembered for many years, a person who can really make a difference to student learning. Most of us can remember a teacher who has inspired us and this is likely to be influential in our chosen career. Mentoring is a vital part of healthcare student learning and the role is an important one. The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) (2008, 2012) describe a mentor as being ‘a mandatory requirement for pre-registration nursing and midwifery students’. Mentors of nursing and midwifery students are accountable to the NMC for their decisions as to whether a student is fit to practise as a nurse or midwife. Mentors of students from the health professions are accountable to the Health Professions Council (HPC) (HPC, 2007, 2008) as to whether the student is suitable to practise as a health professional. This means that the student will have the necessary knowledge, skills and competence to work safely and effectively as a nurse or health professional.

Practice placement providers are responsible for managing assessments of students and ensuring that the students achieve the relevant standards of education and training for their profession (HPC, 2009; NMC, 2008, 2012). Mentors of student nurses and midwives need to be familiar with the NMC's Standards to Support Learning and Assessment in Practice (NMC, 2008). They also need to be familiar with Guidance for Professional Conduct for Nursing and Midwifery Students (NMC, 2011). It is an NMC requirement that all mentors meet the criteria that are outlined in these documents. Mentors for students from the health professions need to be familiar with the HPC's Standards of Proficiency (for each individual discipline) (HPC, 2007, 2008). Mentors should be on the same part or sub-part of the register. That means an adult field nursing student must be mentored by an adult qualified nurse, a paramedic student by a qualified paramedic. In addition the mentor must also be working within the field that they are to be mentoring in.

Some mentors will be sign-off mentors; this will be discussed in more detail later in the book. In nursing, a sign-off mentor has additional responsibilities to a mentor; they are mentors who will make the final assessment of the student's practice so that they can confirm to the NMC that the student has met all of the relevant standards of proficiency to become a qualified nurse (NMC, 2008, 2012). All sign-off mentors have to meet certain criteria. These criteria has been decided by the NMC as stated in their publication Standards to Support Learning and Assessment in Practice (NMC, 2008, 2012). The organisation in which the sign-off mentor works, together with the university that arranges the student placements, will have provided extra training and support for those who wish to be sign-off mentors. The sign-off mentor will work closely with the university, particularly if there are any concerns about a student's professional or clinical capabilities.

All mentors will require some formal training and support throughout their career as mentors. There are accredited mentor preparation programmes available in universities and further education colleges and prospective mentors will have to attend one of these. The programmes can vary in content and length from one academic establishment to another. Once the mentor has successfully completed the preparation course their name will be placed on the mentor register. The name of all qualified mentors are held on a register, which is usually kept, maintained and updated within the organisation in which the mentor is employed (HPC, 2009; NMC, 2008). Those mentors who are sign-off mentors will also have this information recorded on the register.

The sign-off mentor role is about ascertaining whether the student has met certain professional and clinical standards. As a mentor you will be responsible for giving the student constructive feedback with suggestions on how to improve their practice. Your role includes enabling the student to improve their skills and professional behaviour. You will be responsible for assessing the student's level of competence so that they are able to work with patients safely in the future. Mentoring others is a challenging role but it is a role that can be extremely rewarding. This is possibly one of the most important aspects of your work as a qualified nurse (RCN, 2009).

Point to Consider

Mentoring is about you enabling the student so they can reach their full potential. They cannot do this alone; the student needs you and your clinical expertise. No one else can give them this experience or knowledge.

Your Role as a Mentor

Mentors are role models. Role modelling enables the mentor to transfer their values, beliefs, attitudes and aspirations to their students (Bandura, 1986). It is not just about a student observing the mentor – role modelling is about the reinforcement of behaviours (Kinnell and Hughes, 2010). Student learning in placements enables them to conceptualise ideological theories and discussions with the reality of care delivery.

As a mentor you will find there is information available such as mentor guides and websites for healthcare mentors. Most universities have these websites and they can often be accessed easily.

Nurse and midwife mentors are obliged to show they are up to date with current practice and teaching. Therefore every three years you will be required to inform the NMC of pertinent information; this will enable you to stay on the mentor register for your organisation. This process is known as the triennial review (NMC, 2008). Nurses and midwives need to show that they meet the mentor domains as set out by the NMC to be included on the register; they can do this by completing a self-declaration form. Self-declarations are completed once; however, mentors have a responsibility to declare or address areas if for some reason they feel that they do not meet an aspect of the initial self-declaration. In other words any relevant changes should be acknowledged and stated.

It is a requirement that all mentors keep up to date (NMC, 2008, 2011). The purpose of this is to keep you up to date with any new developments regarding teaching, learning and assessing students. Ways to update include:

• Attending the appropriate national and local mentor training courses
• Attending local and regional mentor updates
• Some private training companies offer tailor-made courses to suit individual organisations

Ideally, mentors will be notified of the names of the students that they are to mentor before the student begins their placement. The student should be encouraged to make contact with their placement a few days before they are due to commence their learning. When this initial contact is made you will be able to instruct the student as to what day and time you will be expecting them to start. If you are not there when they make this initial contact it is important that you do return their call. Do not forget to remind the student as to what they will be expected to wear – that is, whether they should wear uniform, or smart office clothes, or smart casual. Clothes should ideally be washable. Remember to reiterate any rules regarding jewellery, make-up and hair or what type of shoes are best to be worn.

It is so important that the student is made to feel welcome, especially on their first day. Read through the following case study:

Case Study

It was Jake's first day at his placement. It was his second placement and he was looking forward to it, especially as in his first placement he had been made to feel welcome and part of the team. He had thought that it was a little strange that when he had phoned last week to find out what time he was starting and whether or not he would be expected to wear uniform, the person who had answered the phone did not seem to have any idea that he was due to start the following week. So he was told to just come along at 9 am in uniform. Jake had hoped that his mentor would ring him back, but when he asked who his mentor was to be the person answered that they did not know but that it definitely wasn't them. So when Jake's first day came he approached the placement with some anguish and trepidation. He wondered if he was more of a nuisance rather than being a valued member of the team and he doubted whether he would be able to meet his learning outcomes.

What Action would you have Taken to make Jake Feel more Confident and Welcome?

1. If you were unavailable to meet with your student, what steps should you take to avoid them feeling alienated and unwanted?

Your reflection should include:

1. It is important that all of the team is involved with student learning. The NMC specifies that teams should have effective professional and interprofessional working relationships so that student learning is fully supported by all of the members of the clinical team and that students are exposed to other knowledge and experiences that can only be gained from other health and social care professionals (NMC, 2008).
2. Mentors are responsible for organising and coordinating their students’ learning activities (NMC, 2008), so they should put systems in place so that their students are fully supported in their learning at all times.

Actions to Avoid

Being unavailable for the student but if this is unavoidable not making suitable arrangements with other colleagues to welcome the new student.

It is obvious from this case study that there ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Publisher Note
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• About the Authors
• Introduction
• 1 A Guide to Mentoring
• 2 Working with Student Nurses
• 3 The Mentor as Facilitator and Teacher
• 4 The Mentor as Assessor
• 5 The Mentor as Leader
• 6 Continuing Professional Development
• Glossary of Terms
• References
• Index