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Online Mentor Update
Why do we need mentors?
Before you go on to learn about these changes, let's consider why we need mentors at all?
Some of the key reasons shown in the literature and by mentors who attend mentor preparation are:
- To support students in practice.
- To assess students.
- "Show them the ropes".
- Maintain patient safety
- Because we were all mentored.
- Protect the public.
- To make sure all students get support in a structured way.
- To give feedback on their work.
- To help them link theory from the classroom to practice.
- Because the NMC say we should.
- To help maintain my own knowledge and skills by knowing the answers to their questions.
There are of course many variations on these answers and you may well be able to think of more. Having considered why we need mentors, and bearing in mind some of the above answers, why do students need to be assessed? This question is raised frequently by both mentors and students alike!
In today's healthcare environments, mentoring can be seen as yet another role to balance within your busy working lives. We recognise it is not an easy role and for some staff it is an expectation of their job description or their pay banding that they will be a mentor for student nurses and allied professions. Some staff will also be key educators and assessors for other groups of staff; for example preceptors for new staff or assessors for staff completing NVQ awards. These roles all require similar skills but within nursing, the Nurse and Midwifery Council (NMC) have specific standards on how mentors would be prepared, updated and the role they have for pre-registration students and for qualified staff undertaking other specialist training (for example district nurse or health visiting courses).
From September 2007, all mentor preparation for new mentors has required a 10 day programme of preparation (NMC 2008). 5 days of this should be protected learning time. Locally we offer a module called Supporting Practice Learning (SPL) to enable staff who have never done mentor preparation to become mentors. This module carries 20 academic degree level credits. Click on the following link for further information regarding the Supporting Practice Learning Module.
Staff completing the SPL module may ask you to help them in collecting their evidence of mentorship for assessment. We call this role a supporting mentor and it can be really helpful to new novice mentors if they can have an experienced colleague to support them in this module. Details on the work they are required to produce is in their Mentor Portfolio which they receive when they commence the SPL module.
It is vital that in order to ensure students are rigorously assessed and the quality of practice based assessment is high, that we support practice areas and all mentors to achieve the support and assessment of the student nurses in turn.
The NMC stipulate that 50% of a student's pre registration course should be spent in practice. We therefore rely on quality mentoring and assessment to ensure that students achieve as well in practice as they do in the classroom academic setting. For this reason all assessment documentation produced by the student should be clear so that mentors can clearly see links to the evidence students produce during their practice experience and achievement of the NMC Outcomes and Proficiencies they are aiming to achieve. These can be found in the current version (May 2008) of the Mentor's Handbook, a copy of which should be in each practice area and it is also available on line along with a wealth of other information to help support mentors in practice.
The Mentor's Handbook is currently being rewritten and will be distributed to your practice area when it becomes available.