Role of the Mentor in Creating Healthy Learning Environment - Essay Example

Paper Outline Introduction 2. Criteria for an Affective Learning Environment 3. Mentor Performance Creating an Environment for Maximum Learning 4. Strategies I Utilize in the Development of my Clinical Learning Environment 5. Educational Theory Supporting Mentorship Concept 6. Conclusion 7. References Role of the Mentor in Creating an Environment for Learning that Supports Maximum Achievements for Individuals Introduction A mentor is a wise and trusted guide and advisor who, according to Rothwell (2010), helps others succeed in their fields of study or interest. Basically, a mentor can act as an instructor, a trusted counsellor or a monitor. As an instructor, a mentor should instruct the mentee on the skills that are important for their professional growth while as a guide, the mentor should enlighten the mentee on the normal unwritten rules in the organization. In the nursing profession, the creation of an effective learning environment is important in ensuring professionalism of students on placement. This calls for the help of mentorship through the creation of an effective learning environment for the student nurse in the most exemplary manner. Achieving an effective learning environment is an uphill task yet it is at the epitome of mentorship. Mentorship is more of a call within the person other than its career role. The presentation of a mentor should be in a way that he/ she is objectively firm with a positive mental attitude with the aim of transferring the same to the mentee. Therefore the challenge is getting an appropriate criterion to follow in the bid to create the most effective learning environment for the mentee. This is only attainable through effective mentorship as Kinnell and Hughes, 2010 put. Criteria for an Affective Learning Environment According to the survey conducted by Orton, Ogier and Fretwell qualified staff is influential to the learning environment for most students in placement Hollingsworth 1997. In nursing practice, they actually play the important role of role modelling to the student. The leadership style and the personality of the ward manager, for example, plays a significant role in building an effective learning environment to the student nurse within that ward. Therefore, the following are key attributes to ensuring a good clinical learning environment: Humanistic Approach to Students The qualified staff and those in management of the hospital should recognize that the students’ role in the sector and treat them in a humane manner. Additionally, understanding them as students and offering assistance to them will play a major role in fostering the students’ self esteem. Further, qualified staff should be sensitive when dealing with students under post registration programs. This is because though a student, they have been working in the field for a specific period of time. Team Spirit Working as a team is a virtue in any organization and the staff should always involve the students in team work. Within the team, the staff should relate with the students in an equitable manner and treat them as colleagues. Management Style Good quality care can only be achieved under an efficient and a flexible management style. The organization should design teaching lessons for the students and thereafter every student should be given responsibility and encouraged to use initiative in consistence with the University curriculum. Management in this scenario should be across the board with many consultative openings as Zimmermann 2002 points out. Teaching and Learning Support In order to strengthen the experience and develop good attitudes among the students who will finally join the profession, the qualified staff should take supervisory, mentorship, and assessing roles. Again, students should be allowed to ask questions, accompany the staff in medical rounds, observe medical procedures and allowed to view the patient records. The learning environment on the other hand can be created by involving the non-nursing staff including the doctors, physiotherapists, dieticians and chaplains in the team described above. The ward managers on the other hand have the role of explaining to the new students the department ethics and their significance to learning. The management should ensure that the students are actively involved in certain roles rather than making them passive observers. On the contrary, students should be encouraged to take up roles and responsibilities for better understanding on their scope of professionalism. Fostering students who are critical thinkers calls for a management that gives a chance for the students to seek clarification without fear. Additionally, allowing the students to be innovative in trying out different principles plays a significant role in bringing up young professionals. Training schedules in the hospital should allow students to work in pairs as this will benefit both of them. Assigning Roles and Looking for Feedback Ensuring the student is performing the stipulated roles and looking for positive feedback is primary to a mentor on the mentee. Particularly, constructive feedback is what I look for so as to engage the mentee to a positive mental attitude in nursing as a career. By providing positive feedback, my mentee is able to understand the progress at hand and the expected performance. Partin, 2009 likens student feedback to an avenue for the mentor to create a healthy learning environment as it reveals the level the learner grasped in the learning process. Describing the mentee’s behaviour in a positive way has helped in developing a good relationship with the mentor. Assigning different roles to the mentee helps in developing professional interests and helps the mentee in setting up realistic career goals. Mentor Performance Creating an Environment for Maximum Learning According to Kinnell and Hughes, 2010 it is not enough to be a mentor but being an effective mentor. This to me has been a basic aim. In mentoring my assigned student, we have together made critical plans that to me have made me a role model to the student. My beginning point was to identify mentorship qualities and an evaluation of who I am. This helped me set up an environment that made me approachable by my mentee in every way. This was to me not enough yet; deep reading in the nursing area and other related fields became essential as it made me provide most answers to the enquiries and questions by the mentee. The confidence built made him look at me more as a mentor than just a consultant. We more often than not conducted practical and social tasks of nursing together to help my mentee observe and also try the same individually. The direct observation approach I took on my mentee has been instrumental in helping the student identify with me as a role model and find focus on the professionalism of nursing through my mentorship. I believe that allowing the student observe the mentor’s conduct and being given chance alone with similar situation forms an important element of mentorship in the nursing profession. This has been my underlining principle that has given me the experience in creating a healthy environment for maximum learning. As Ormrod (1999) suggests, the best learning is by observation Strategies for the Development of Clinical Learning Environment My clinical learning has a central core in my planning and time utility. To balance between mentorship and career study has been of importance to me. What, however, I have seen is the complementary relationship between the two. A tandem approach to the two has not been of any negative effect except for the time aspect. Other factors like material search and practical aspects have smoothly been complemented by the mentorship role as they have made my work easier to handle. Some strategies I have put in place to ensure development of my clinical learning environment as Dunn and Burnett 1995 highlight include the following: Enhancement of my Staff-Student Relationship This is through involvement of other staff members in the learning processes as Quinn, 1988 points out. These include the doctors, physiotherapists, dieticians, in-charge nurses, the ward sisters alongside other trained staff. These are very instrumental in creating a healthy learning environment. This has been done through occasional get together fellowships and joint planning. Commitment to Nurse Management This strategy shall be achieved through overall organization of the system defining the roles and responsibilities of everyone in the learning environment so as to avoid conflict of interest in the learning system. The aim here is to have an efficient and flexible learning environment that will facilitate learning and quality care. Zimmermann 2002, in his book’s preface points out that the best way of avoiding management problems is through networking and letting others teach you. Ensuring Good Patient Relationships A good patient relationship can elicit information that might lead to efficient learning. To obtain such information requires a lot of tact. In my strategies the patients take a central position as they are the clients and learning aids. To facilitate this I stress on confidentiality of any information obtained from or about the patient. The long term effect should be the patients’ confidence that will in turn minimize conflict and elicit cooperation from the patients during the learning process Creating a Good Interpersonal Relationship Working is best done as a team. Team work on the other hand is only possible where good interpersonal relationship exists. In this case a framework is to be put in place to resolve any interpersonal conflicts that may arise at the place of learning due to the strains and stresses of work and any other reasons. This may mean instilling necessary and firm disciplinary measures and/ or guidance on the involved parties. Student Nurse Satisfaction. The student is the whole reason learning is there in the system. As learning clients, their satisfaction is important to the instructor. To ensure this, a forum is created to respond to the individual needs of the learner through interactive tuition and practical sessions. The leaner should be allowed time to internalize a concept and respond to the information acquired in the learning process through evaluation and testing. Educational Theory Supporting Mentorship Concept There are several educational theories developed with the aim of explaining educational concepts and human response to learning environment. However of our concern is the social learning theory which is the motherboard on which mentorship is embedded as Ormrod, 1999 helps us explore. The social learning theory considers the learning that takes place in a social environment in which case people obtain knowledge from others through observation, modelling, and imitation. This means that the learners must have someone to look upon as a source of the information they are looking for. In our context this person is a mentor and the learner is the mentee. In social learning the learner should not be manipulated to change his/ her behavioural pattern by the mentor but rather gain information without changing. Simon and Schuster, 1995 talk of diffusion of information fro the mentor to the mentee which therefore requires time for the effect to be felt or noticed. In this approach to learning the mentor is to help the mentee cognitively realize his own abilities and with guidance bring them into a sharper focus through practice. This demands a lot of attention on the learner’s side in the observation and later imitation of what was observed. The response of the learner is the measure of what was induced. The mentor in social learning acts as a role model to be emulated by the mentee. The mentor therefore strives at ensuring maximum attention from the student who in turn should be able to retain the behaviour observed as seen through replication of the behaviour. To achieve this, the mentor sets up motivational measures to make the mentee demonstrate the skill gained through a measurable evaluation with motivational response from the mentor. On the other hand the mentor should take guard against manipulating the mentee by allowing for self regulation by the student which may be achieved by letting the learner set own goals, carry out a self observation, have a self judgment of what is right or wrong and allow for self reaction. All these can be achieved if the learner is given chance to self-reward. The bottom line of all these is that the mentor has a role in helping the learner set realistic goals and expectations in line with his career pursuit. This is by making him believe in himself Conclusion The overall role of a mentor to a student nurse to this point cannot be underscored seeing the model position he plays in the mentee’s life. The underlying reality of the self sacrifice by the mentor for the sake of the success of the learner is worth emphasizing. We find the integration of many learning aspects of learning that the mentor puts in place with the aim of creating the best learning environment for the student. This includes the involvement of all stakeholders in the system to look at the student with dignity as having a need to succeed in the chosen career. Management adjustments are also made and probably customized to accommodate the specific needs of the student. We may together agree with Kinnell and Hughes, 2010 that it is more than just calling oneself a mentor. It rather is important when the mentor can be seen as an effective mentor able to create a healthy learning environment for and with the student through a process of behavioural diffusion. The ultimate goal of mentorship is to see the mentee able to stand on his own and succeed in the career of choice through the help of the mentor and all stakeholders in the system. References Dunn SV, Burnett P. (1995) The Development of a Clinical Learning Environment Scale. School of Nursing, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8675872 viewed 10th July 2010. Hollingsworth, S. (1997) International Action Research: A Casebook for Educational Reform Routledge. London. Kinnell, D. and Hughes, P. (2010) Mentoring Nursing and Healthcare Students. SAGE Publications Ltd. Ormrod, J.E. (1999) Human Learning, (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ, Prentice-Hall. Partin, R. L. (2009) The Classroom Teachers Survival Guide: Practical Strategies, Management Techniques and Reproducibles for New and Experienced Teachers. Survival Guides Jossey-Bass teacher (3rd ed.), Vol. 33. John Wiley and Sons. Rogers, E. M. (1995) Diffusion of Innovations (4th ed.) Simon and Schuster. Rothwell, W. J. (2010) Effective Succession Planning: Ensuring Leadership Continuity and Building Talent from Within (4th ed). AMACOM Division American Management Assn. Read More