Key Professional Requirements for Mentorship Practice - Coursework Example

Introduction This essay is about mentoring paramedics, providing a learning contract with them, and providing them with a learning tool. It also explainssome of the expectations on the mentor are and the mentees. Mentorship involves a relationship between an experienced and a trusted advisor and the learner (Jarvis & Gibson 1997). It can enable someone to increase job satisfaction, enhance his self-esteem and confidence, have enhanced role socialization, and have a definitive career plan (Barker 2009). According to Malnyk & Overholt(2010), it is extremely paramount for career guidance, personal development, career choice and enhanced productivity. A device system for measuring mentorship potential has been put in place to outline the characteristics of a good mentor that include an envisioned, a standard prodder and a challenger (Butterworth et al.1998). Learning styles There are several learning styles, which can be adapted in a learning process each of which suites, a particular person in certain particular situations. Several theories have been developed to investigate and explain the effect of the learning styles to certain specific aspects of a learning process (Mowrer 2001).According to Sadler-Smith & Evans (2006) application of such theories still hold great promise to practitioners as a potential powerful mechanism for enabling students and trainees to manage their own learning better. Their mentors to understanding their learning styles, those of their mentors and those of their close peers so that they can be able to enhance collaborative learning relationships advise paramedical students. For the learning to be effective, it is necessary to compare the preferred modes of learning and the specific learning objectives (Sims 1995). These paramedics are also advised by their mentors to be always relating their learning styles with what they aim to achieve in order to be able to evaluate whether they are effective and where they need to be strengthened. According to LeFever (1995), when a student or a trainee knows about his learning style, it changes the opinion he has about himself. This in most cases increases his ability and will to learn new ideas and skills. It is evident among the paramedics that those who understand their learning styles have high self-esteem and are able to increase their ability to handle the causes and thus they do not face many difficulties in maneuvering their way through paramedical concepts. In this case, mentors due to their experience and knowledge can assist the paramedical students to identify their preferred learning style through identifying their strengths and weakness. They also help them to identify whether the learning style, which they have been using is effective through assessments and whether it maximizes their potential which. According to Dunn & Griggs (2000), this is what characterizes an effective learning style. To allow a deep insight the learner’s learning needs and reveal the interplay between biological and learned style preferences a learning styles model can be adapted (Prashnig 2006).This kind of a model can improve the learners’ knowledge about themselves as well as assisting them in monitoring their learning styles. It can also be used to determine whether the learning style, which the learner has been using, has been effective. In such a case mentorships comes into play in assisting the student or trainee in understanding the model and relating it to his own situation. According to Konig (2005), it is very possible for a learner to optimize his own learning style. For us to ensure that paramedics optimize their own learning style, we make sure that each of them has a mentor or a pool of mentors to guide him, criticize some of the things they do wrong and give them suggestion, ideas and options about how to resolve certain situations. It has been discovered that students and trainees exhibit a wide variety of learning styles due to their individual differences (Dunn & Griggs 1998). We can say that one learning style is absolutely better than others are since one of them can be effective depending on the user’s strengths and weaknesses. According to Sonbuchner (2009), understanding ones learning style can help someone to identify his weaknesses and strengths and thus make him more empowered. If a good mentorship program is put in place when training paramedics then the understanding of each individuals learning style is enhanced and thus making them to be empowered to be more productive in their undertakings. One of the methods that can be used to show how the learning styles can influence the learning process is using an experiential learning model. According to Mackay (2007), this model aims to show that there are a number of different individual’s responses to any potential learning situation. The difference in people’s learning styles makes them to respond differently to a particular learning situation. For paramedics training we have several individuals being put to one learning situation with one tutor having to train several trainees. In such a case, it is very difficult to ensure maximum understanding among them due to the learning style and processing abilities. In such cases mentors come into play to enable the trainees to acquire the knowledge that they might have failed to acquire in class and also to polish up what they had understood. Learning environment There are various learning environments for paramedics. According to Marca (2010), a leaning environment can be regarded as a situation or conditions in which learning is believed to be experienced. The various learning environments for paramedics are classrooms, laboratories, and ambulances just to mention a few. Each of these environments has their own advantages and disadvantages in terms of how they favor learning process among students. The most advantageous of the three learning environments is the ambulance-learning environment. The ambulance has all the equipment necessary for learning of paramedical activities (Fleisher & Ludwig 2010). This makes this environment to promote learning among the students since they get chances to use the equipment in administering paramedical services to patients. This enhances their learning and thus promotes their understanding on the course contents. In the ambulance, we have the activities of profession administering paramedical services to patient (Tintinalli et al. 2010). These professions can provide paramedical students with some kind of mentorship on how to apply the skill they obtain in class in practical real life situation. They can also help them to polish-up their knowledge on various paramedical concepts since they have been in paramedical services administering for enough period. This makes this environment very conducive for the learning process among the paramedics and thus promotes understanding among them. The ambulance environment also involves practical work (Kyle & Mullay 2008). Therefore, in this environment the students do practical work rather than the theoretical work done in classes. These practical undertakings can promote their understanding of paramedical concepts and thus make them better learners. Practical undertakings found in ambulance learning environment enhance their thinking thus promoting their learning especially when they are involved in the actual ambulance activities. The ambulance environment also exposes them to the challenges they might expect in their actual professional activities. This can help them in deciding the kind of assistance they can acquire from their mentors and the knowledge they require from their coursework activities. The actually plays a critical part in promoting learning among them and thus increases the chances of them becoming better paramedical professionals. We should also not neglect the other learning environments and their importance. According to Beebe & Myers (2011), the classroom environment is very appropriate when it comes to theoretical and instructional learning. Another learning environment that is also very important among the paramedics is the laboratory since it promotes in-depth practical work and instructions. Thus to enhance learning among the paramedics are the learning environments bust be used and necessary instructions and mentorship provided in each of the environments. Assessment According to Earl (2003), assessments and tests or exams were traditionally known to be synonymous but as understanding on how learning takes place assessment is now understood to be very different from tests and examinations. This is because assessment can have different purposes and can be designed to achieve different objectives some of which the tests and exams cannot achieve. Moreover, assessment is applied in several places other than schools and learning institution while the exams and tests are mainly used in schools and other learning institutions. For example, when assessment is used in the work place to assess the suitability of an employee to a particular role or to determine the employees’ performance and thus recommend on how improvements can be achieved. One of the principles required when assessing paramedics is that mentors should have prepared for their role to support and assess learning among the students and meet defined outcomes (RCN 2007). During the assessment the mentor should ascertain whether the student have attained the required standard of proficiency for safe and effective practice.These mentors are therefore expected to be competent paramedical professional who have high levels of knowledge and competency in the paramedical field. This knowledge is actually mandatory for them to be able to play this role as assessors. A mentor should play several roles during assessment of his mentee. One of them is ensuring professional growth, personal development, and accountability of the student (SHU 2007). He should make sure that at the end of the paramedical course the student comes out well baked with high degree of professionalism, personal knowledge and accountability. This is only possible through continuous assessment and one that is tailored towards enhancing students learning and professional development. Another role is ensuring that the students are able to use their assessment result to improve their learning and the other one is using the assessment data to improve teaching process. For a good assessment to be done time has to be allocated for assessments only to enable the mentors to engage in the process of continuous assessment (UoS 2005). This could ensure that the assessments will be able to serve their intended purposes of promoting learning among the students. After continually assessing the student, the mentor can be able to determine whether the student is ready to practice as a paramedic or not. If the mentor finds the student unfit, he should fail the student (Duffy 2004). In this case, the student has no option other than looking for another career option other than the paramedical course he was undertaking. The assessments in a paramedical course act as a form of quality control prior to a student’s being allowed passage through the standards of profession. This quality control activity is greatly influenced by the mentors who make the pass/fail assessment decisions (UoS 2005). However, the mentors and lecturer have sometimes failed to fail the students whose professional competency is in doubt. This is based on factors like mentor manipulation by the mentee. The organization responsible for setting the standards that the paramedical students are required to pass before being allowed to practice as paramedical professionals in the Nursing and Midwifery Council. This organization determine about when the student should be failed and when he should be allowed to practice. However, it gives the mandate of what should determine a pass or a fail to the mentor. As a result, mentors should be very accountable in the decision they make to make sure that there lacks an inappropriate person allowed to practice as a paramedic (Duffy 2004). They should ensure that they do not fail to fail a student who is not fit to practice as a paramedic. Conclusion Mentoring student paramedics is very necessary in various stages of their career life. Mentoring this kind of students is greatly influenced by their learning styles and their learning environment. Mentors also play very major role in assessing the students especially in determining what makes up a pass or a fail. The Nursing and Midwifery Council sets the standard for assessing nurses and require mentors to be accountable for their decisions about whether to pass or fail a student. The differences in the learning styles due to individual differences calls for a mentorship program to be designed in such a way to suite a particular mentee. Moreover, a good learning environment that promotes collaborative relationship between the mentor and the mentee is crucial for a mentorship program to be successful. Furthermore, one of the purposes of a mentorship program is to promote learning of the mentee through various formative assessments. 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Retrieved from: https://www.shef.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.82726!/file/assmay05.pdf On 25 May 2012 Read More