MENTOR UPDATE 2006/7

1. MENTOR UPDATE 2006/7 The mentor as a partner in pre-registration education

2. Today’s Update • This update has been prepared to give you an opportunity to consider your role within the partnership that provides pre-registration nursing and midwifery education • If you have any other topics you wish to address, areas you wish to explore or concerns you wish to resolve, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ASK QUESTIONS AT ANY TIME.

3. Changes on our Horizon • In August 2007 ‘Suffolk College’ will be disestablished. • Nursing and Midwifery education will be relocated in ‘University Campus Suffolk’ • Or more simply ‘UCS’

4. UCS • The partnership that has been established between Nursing and Midwifery education and practice will not only endure this change, but will be enhanced by it.

5. The Mentor in the Partnership • It has been recognised for many years now that the partnership in education in Suffolk is one of the best in the country. • We can’t point to ‘partnership meetings’ or ‘partnership events’ because our partnership is embedded in everything that we do. • Our students perceive this as seamless – ‘college’ and practice with one agenda.

6. The Positive things that grow from our partnership are: Areas where our partnership is difficult to discern or has the potential to be strengthened are: How do you see the partnership?

7. The Mentor in the Partnership • The part that you play, as an individual Mentor has a number of underpinnings • Professional expectations • Professional awareness • Professional pride

8. Professional expectations • This document says - • “6.4 You have a duty to facilitate students of nursing and midwifery and others to develop their competence.” • But, it doesn’t mention mentorship!

9. Professional expectations • It also says - • “4.3 You must communicate effectively and share your knowledge, skill and expertise with other members of the team as required for the benefit of patients and clients.” • But it still doesn’t mention Mentorship

10. Personal Tutors and Mentors • Students should have named registrants (from the same part of the register) to support their learning in both academic and practice environments. These persons would be involved in assessing their standards of proficiency to enter the register. Other members of the teaching and health care team may contribute to learning and assessment in both environments but would not undertake summative assessment of standards of proficiency for entry to the register.

11. Student midwives should be supported in both academic and practice learning environments. Midwife teachers and midwife mentors have the knowledge, skills and expertise to provide appropriate support to student midwives. As such they are able to identify appropriate learning opportunities for the student midwife and offer her advice and guidance to develop safe woman centred practice that enables the student to become a midwife. A variety of members of the teaching and health care team may contribute to the student’s learning …

12. Professional awareness • “Working in collaboration involves a partnership where mutual goal setting occurs, where authority and responsibility for actions belong to individual partners, The change requires a move away from independence to interdependence where strength and power are derived from working with others …

13. Professional awareness • … respecting and trusting each other and sharing the vision, the planning, the goal setting, the work, the successes and the failures. • Murray et al (2005) Working collaboratively toward practice placements, Nurse Education in Practice, Vol5, pp127-128

14. Professional pride • Through working together we can produce professional practitioners in whom we can take pride, and thus take personal pride in our part in their preparation. At Major Review last year our reviewers concluded that: • “students, mentors and teachers are confident of the robustness of the assessment process in the practice settings.”

15. “students, mentors and teachers” • college n. organised society of persons having certain functions, rights and privileges; place of professional study. • university n. corporate institution … providing instruction in higher branches of learning; all members of university

16. “all members of university” • The college is not simply the buildings in which teaching and learning takes place. The university will not be simply a new collection of buildings in which teaching and learning takes place.

17. The Mentor as a partner • We all have “functions, rights and privileges” in “providing instruction in higher branches of learning” because as students, mentors or teachers we are all part of that “organised society of persons” who will be “members of (the ) university” • What are yours?

18. As a partner in the pre-registration education of nurses and midwives and a provider of instruction in higher branches of learning My functions are: My rights are: My privileges are:

20. http://healthweb.suffolk.ac.uk Please note: this website is no longer operational – go instead to www.ucs.ac.uk and look for the faculty of health, wellbeing and science page, follow the link to ‘Health Partners’ for our extended and improved resource

21. Thank You and Goodbye • Before you go. Are you sure you don’t have any more questions? • Coming soon to a powerpoint near you. The Sign-off Mentor (an everyday story of simple clinical folk)