Mentoring in Nursing and Healthcare

A Practical Approach

Kate Kilgallon, Janet Thompson

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781118276099
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Nursing Skills

Mentoring in Nursing and Healthcare is a practical, interactive resource that promotes active participation and enhances a deeper level of understanding of mentorship. It explores what is meant by the process of mentoring, addresses what a mentor is, what the role entails, and gives practical help on teaching and assessing students in clinical practice. Written primarily for mentors, this book offers a range of theoretical and practical activities and resources that are enhanced by online learning resources.

Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of mentorship, including:

• The role of mentorship
• The mentor-student relationship
• The mentor as teacher
• Experiential learning and reflective practice
• Learning styles and teaching theories
• The mentor as assessor
• Competence and capability
• Health improvement
• Career development

A core text for mentor preparation and mentor update courses in nursing and allied health, Mentoring in Nursing and Healthcare is an essential guide that supports learning and ongoing professional development.

Key Features:

• Includes not only the latest and most up-to-date NMC standards, but also the Health andCareProfessions Council's standards of proficiency
• Accessible and practice-oriented, with case studies, reflective exercises and activities throughout
• Has a strong focus on assessment skills
• Supported by interactive online resources that include test-yourself questions, multiple choice questions, web-links, PowerPoint slides, case studies, and activitiesat www.wiley.com/go/mentoring

1

Mentorship

Kate Kilgallon

Introduction

This chapter introduces Mentoring in Nursing and Healthcare: A practical approach and looks at what we mean by the term ‘mentorship’. The history of mentorship is discussed and terms used within healthcare to describe an experienced practitioner supporting a novice student are examined. A comparison of mentoring and coaching will facilitate healthcare practitioners’ critical analysis of their own role within practice. Case studies are used to illustrate the characteristics that an effective mentor should demonstrate. The activities provided will give you an opportunity to reflect on your own mentoring skills.

Web Resource 1.1: Pre-Test Questions

Before starting this chapter, it is recommended that you visit the accompanying website and complete the pre-test questions. This will help you to identify any gaps in your knowledge and reinforce the elements that you already know.

Learning outcomes

On completion of this chapter, the reader will be able to:

• Demonstrate an understanding of the concept of mentoring
• Recognise the differences in terminology used within healthcare
• Appraise the characteristics required by an effective mentor
• Appreciate the difficulties in distinguishing between the terms ‘mentoring’ and ‘coaching’

Mentoring and Mentorship

A mentor has commonly been regarded as someone who encourages and offers direction and advice to a protégé or novice. Over the centuries, artists and musicians have had mentors. The concept has also been used in the business world, especially in the USA. According to Palmer (1987, cited in Ellis 1996), a classic mentoring relationship develops and grows between two individuals over a long period of time. Such relationships have lasted for 2–15 years and have provided professional and emotional support for both individuals. Classic mentoring provides an informal link between two people who are willing to work with each other and provide wise advice with no financial gain on either side. Mentorship within healthcare and social care is not classic mentoring. One obvious difference is that students are allocated to practice areas for a relatively short period of time so that the mentoring relationship does not develop and grow over a long period of time. Another point is that students have a different mentor for each practice area and a student does not have the opportunity to choose his or her own mentor. Students are allocated mentors, usually by the practice area manager, who has to consider issues such as workloads, staff holidays and sickness. Morton-Cooper and Palmer (2000) do consider mentoring within healthcare and social care to be true mentoring because it contains elements of mentor function with the onus on helper functions, from which a relationship often develops.

Activity 1.1

Thinking back over your health or social care career, recall significant people who have influenced your career and learning. What did they do that inspired you? What did you get out of the relationship?

When I think of significant people in my own career, I think of a manager who was my professional ‘sounding board’. I was a newly appointed night sister and I would use her to talk through solutions to problems that I had. She would listen to me and then ask me why I had made that particular decision. What else could I have done? I would go to her when I had made a decision that I was concerned about. Again, she would listen to me and then she would make me reflect on my actions. If she thought that I had made the wrong decision, she would talk me through what I had learnt from the situation and what I would, or could, do differently the next time. She did have expectations of me and she would tell me truthfully when I had let her down. I had an enormous amount of respect for her as a healthcare professional and an individual.

Mentorship is intended to be a one-to-one relationship where the mentor invests time, knowledge and efforts to help the mentee reach his or her potential as a person and as a professional in terms of behaviours, knowledge and skills.

Mentoring is an old formula of human development with its origins in the Stone Age, when the artists who painted on cave walls or the medicine men who used medicinal herbs to heal sickness instructed the youth in their clan in order to pass on their knowledge.

Mentorship, as we know it, owes its name to Greek mythology. The original ‘Mentor’ was a friend and adviser of Telemachus, Odysseus’ son in Homer’s poem, The Odyssey. In this poem Odysseus went off to war and left his son under the care and direction of Mentor. Mentor’s role encompassed elements of guardianship, tutoring and support. This original idea of the word mentoring is based on experiential learning with support and challenge. The Indo-European root men means to ‘think’ whereas in Ancient Greece the word mentor means adviser. So a mentor is an adviser of thought (Garvey et al 2009).

During the Middle Ages the concept of mentor developed. Fénélon (1651–1715), who was the tutor to Louis XIV’s heir, viewed mentoring as providing support and helping to remove the fear of failure by building confidence. Fénélon considered life events to be learning opportunities. He stated that pr-arranged or chance happenings, if explored with the support and guidance of a pre-mentor, provided opportunities for the learner to acquire a good understanding of the ways of the world (Garvey et al 2009). Fénélon’s attributes of a mentor included being assertive and calm in the face of adversity, demonstrating charismatic leadership abilities, and being inspirational and trustworthy (Garvey et al 2009).

In 1759, Caracciolli wrote about the importance of the mentor expressing wisdom so there was a need for the mentor to have self-knowledge in order to enhance the knowledge of the mentee. The mentor should be able to build rapport and establish trust, be inspirational and empathetic. Caracciolli mentions the benefits of reflection for enriching the mind and the need to understand the cultural climate of the mentee (Garvey et al 2009). He proposed a staged mentoring process model with developing awareness as the main outcome of mentoring. He stated:

Observation leading to …

Toleration leading to …

Reprimands leading to …

Correction leading to …

Friendship leading to …

Awareness.

(Garvey et al 2009, p 15)

Garvey et al (2009) state how two versions of mentoring can be depicted in this model. One version is the stern mentor who reprimands and corrects and the second is the friendly mentor who tolerates and offers friendship. They argue that this model is just as relevant today within mentoring and coaching. Observation can be interpreted as an aspect of performance coaching, and toleration can be linked to listening and acceptance, reprimand with challenge and correction with skills coaching.

In 1762 Rousseau developed the idea even further and founded experiential learning which is still promoted today. He saw mentoring as a vehicle for learning, growth and social development of the student, which in turn leads to confidence. He saw dialogue between the mentor and the mentee as an important element of learning and considered the most effective learning to take place on a one-to-one basis.

Contemporary definitions of mentorship encompass a number of concepts including coaching, sponsorship and counselling. Clutterbuck and Megginson (2005) give a variety of definitions including the following:

• Mentors are influential people who help individuals achieve major life goals.
• Mentoring is a process in which one person (the mentor) is responsible for overseeing the career and development of another (the protégé or mentee).
• Mentoring is a protected relationship in which learning and experimentation can occur, skills can develop and results can be measured.

Why do Students Need a Mentor?

Is it important that students have a mentor during their clinical placements? Do mentors actually support the student? Think about Scenario 1.1.

Scenario 1.1

This was Lizzie’s second clinical placement – a respiratory medical ward which, it seemed to Lizzie, was always manic. Lizzie felt totally out of her depth although the rest of the staff, including the other student who...