Mentoring Nursing and Healthcare Students Essay examples -- Nursing Ed

The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) defines the role of a mentor as a nurse with specific training who is able to facilitate learning, and supports and supervises students in a practice setting (NMC 2008). Mentorship plays an integral part in the next generation of practitioners and nursing professionals play a vital role in guiding a process that allows the transference of knowledge, skills and attributes from healthcare professionals to the students they are working with (English National Board and Department of Health 2001). This assignment will critically review the key issues for the preparation of an effective learning environment and appraise the opportunities and challenges experienced when facilitating learning in practice. It will analyse the mentors role and accountability within the assessment process, and the evaluation processes that develop student learning in practice. The environment in which this assignment is set is a thirty bedded Acute Medical Ward, within the Department of Medicine for older people in an NHS teaching hospital. A mentors role in this clinical setting involves providing both formal and informal learning opportunities in supporting students, newly qualified nurses and Healthcare support workers. A strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis of the clinical setting ( appendix1) highlights the complexities of this learning environment. In recent years a great deal of emphasis has been placed on the clinical environment and its importance in the facilitation of learning, where students are most likely to be receptive to learning and nurses are able to combine the theory taught at university, with the practical skills required to become a competent practitioner. Pell... ...oyal College of Nursing (RCN) (2007) Guidance for mentors of nursing students and midwives, London: Royal College of Nursing Shakespeare, P. and Webb, C. (2008) 'Professional identity as a resource for talk: exploring the mentor-student relationship', Nursing Inquiry, 15 (4), pp 270-279 Sharples, K., Kelly, D. and Elcock, K. (2007) 'Supporting mentors in practice', Nursing Standard, 21 (39), pp 44-47 Spouse, J. (2008) 'Learning through legitimate peripheral participation', Nurse Education Today, 18 (5), pp 345-351 Tetheridge, J. (2010) 'Interviewing student and qualified nurses to find out what makes an effective mentor', Nursing Times, 106 (48), pp 19 – 21 Timmins, F. and Kaliszer, M. (2002) 'Aspects of nurse education programmes that frequently cause stress to nursing students – fact finding sample survey', Nurse Education Today, 22, pp 203-211