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.

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.

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.

There are several reasons why a student needs a mentor.

The obvious reasons are for guidance and support. But the mentor can also structure the working environment for the student so that the student becomes familiar with the ways of working of those in the clinical area. The mentor is also a role model. This prevents students such as Lizzie being left to their own devices and trying to decide what they should be doing and how it should be done. Mentors can also provide an appropriate knowledge base for the student; they can answer students’ questions, and give encouragement and support, thus building up a student’s confidence. Also important is the mentor giving constructive and honest feedback and debriefing the student after a good or bad experience (Neary 2000; Gopee 2008). In Lizzie’s case, her mentor needs to ensure that Lizzie feels confident and safe in the clinical area and does not feel ‘out of her depth’. Lizzie needs to know whom she can go to gain practical experience and support.

The Benefits of Mentoring for the Student

Several benefits have been identified for the student who has a mentor:

• Improved performance and productivity
  
• Enhanced career opportunities and career advancement
  
• Improved knowledge and skills development
  
• Greater confidence, wellbeing, commitment and motivation.

Morton-Cooper and Palmer (2000) support the above arguing that students need a mentor for the following reasons:

• As a defence against feelings of disorientation, disillusionment and burn-out
  
• As a sounding board to clarify values
  
• For skill rehearsing and for role modelling in practice
  
• To help the student develop an ability to deal with emotions in a beneficial way
  
• To demonstrate best practice
  
• To develop relationships within practice with other team members.

Benefits for the practitioner acting as the mentor have also been recognised.

The Benefits of Mentoring for the Mentor

These include the following (Alred et al 2006):

• Improved performance
  
• Greater job satisfaction, loyalty, commitment and self-awareness
  
• New knowledge and skills acquired; the mentor learns from the student as well as the student learning from the mentor
  
• Leadership development
  
• Improved relationships with colleagues, students and patients/clients as communication across boundaries between disciplines and teams is improved as the mentor identifies learning opportunities for the student in practice.

Morton (2003) mentions mutuality (p 7) which is the idea that both parties gain from the experience.

Characteristics of a Mentor

Darling (1984) identified three requirements for a significant mentoring relationship. She stated that these were absolute requirements:

Attraction, affect, action

The student must be attracted to the potential mentor by their admiration for them and desire to emulate that person in some way – ‘I want to walk like you, talk like you’. In return, the mentor must recognise qualities in the student that are a potential for further development.

Although it would be ideal to be able to choose a potential mentor whom the student admires and respects (Morle [1990] argues that mentors are selected by mentees for their professional ability and personal characteristics), within health and social care this is rarely achievable because students are allocated blindly to mentors in clinical areas. Before the students’ placements, mentors and students have not previously met each other. If students could choose a mentor it may be the case that there would be an imbalance of mentor allocation (students soon learn which mentors are better than others!).

The mentor must have positive feelings, affect, towards the student as an individual, and be able to give respect, encouragement and support.

This can be difficult to achieve in healthcare because students are allocated to clinical areas for short periods of time. This means that a rapport has to be developed rapidly and assumptions have to be made by the mentor and the student that may or may not be correct, and conflict may ensue.

The third requirement, action, requires the mentor to invest time and energy on behalf of the student – teaching, guiding and counselling.

These attributes are additional to the mentor’s main role and are sometimes undertaken in the mentor’s own time. Therefore, some mentors are able to facilitate students’ needs more effectively than others.

This is similar to Palmer’s (1987) work (cited in Ellis 1996) which breaks down the mentor role into three subsections:

Gopee (2008) mentions characteristics such as being patient, open-minded and approachable. The mentor should have a good knowledge base and be up to date in their knowledge and practical skills. Other factors include the ability to communicate verbally and the ability to listen. A mentor should encourage their students and demonstrate concern, compassion and empathy.

What should a Mentor do?

A common theme with students is the need for the mentor to possess personal and professional qualities such as approachability, good interpersonal skills and self-confidence. The mentor also needs to respect the student and to show interest in them while demonstrating their skills as a competent and enthusiastic practitioner. Morton-Cooper and Palmer (2000) state that mentors should enable students to discover and use their own talents while encouraging and nurturing the contribution that the student can make to their profession. The mentor should help the student to become successful. Neary (2000) considers that mentors should be prepared to give both time and energy to their role, be up to date in their knowledge and skills as well as being competent in the basic skills of coaching, counselling, facilitating, giving feedback and networking.

Benner (1984) stated that the role of the experienced practitioner in the clinical environment was to facilitate the transition from novice to competent practitioner.

Burnard and Chapman (1990) see a mentor as an experienced practitioner whose role is to guide and look after the student. In general a mentor is usually someone who is experienced and more senior than the student. It used to be the case that they were also older than the student, although this now often tends not to be the case (see Chapter 2). It has been found that students’ stress levels are significantly decreased if the mentor and the practice environment are friendly (Spouse 2001). Mentors should therefore be friendly, enthusiastic and demonstrate a genuine interest in the student (Quinn and Hughes 2007).

Darling (1984) undertook a study that looked at the characteristics that student nurses wanted in a mentor. This study resulted in a number of roles being identified; these roles are equally valid for students of all healthcare professions (Box 1.1).

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