Mentoring in an Acute In-patient Mental Health Ward

In this essay I am going to discuss the key enabling traits required by a mentor (Morton-Cooper and Palmer, 2005). I will analysis the different ways I have utilized these enabling traits as a mentor to influence the successful mentoring of my third year student in an acute in-patient mental health ward. The essay will be supported with relevant educational theory. Finally, I will reflect and evaluate on my performance as a mentor.

Mentoring is an important role to undertake as a nurse, formally or informally in once professional life. This experience will help many nurses to recognize areas of development and further career option, for example nurse lecturer, practitioner and manager. The English National Board and Department for Health (2000) define mentorship as the role of the nurse, midwife or health visitor who facilitates learning and supervises and assesses students in the practice setting. Since mentors spend most time with students in the clinical area, they are in the best position to judge students’ capabilities and to guide and assist them in developing and achieving their learning objectives. The NMC (2006) states that Sign off Mentors have final assessment of practice to make judgements that all competencies have been met and that the student is considered proficient to register.

Morton-Cooper and Palmer (2000) identified good mentors as those that have enabling traits. These include the following:

Competence - mentors should have the appropriate knowledge of the subject area as well as a sense of organization. Some of the attributes of competence include the ability to command respect from others and the skill to build the student’s strengths by giving constructive criticism and feedback. Other skills incl...

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...essional role as a mentor.

CONCLUSION

There is a need to recognize that once one takes on the role of mentor, they will need these enabling traits, thus knowing which best suits the student’s development. Being a mentor has given me the opportunity to develop learning skills in my clinical practice that will contribute to students learning and hence my professional developing as a nurse educator in the future.

The lessons that I learned regarding been a good mentor is the ability to transfer my knowledge and enthusiasm to students and junior staff and guide them towards succeeding. My student developed a friendly relationship with me and gained a lot of respect for the help I provided. Finally, it is clear that as a mentor one should have an attitude of giving and that the enabling traits of commitment, confidence and competence are extremely important.