Role of Mentors in Ensuring Student Competencies - Essay Example

?The Role of Mentors in Ensuring NMC Competencies             A sign-off mentor is an experienced mentor who has met certain criteria and competencies to enable him or her undertake affirmation that a nursing or a midwifery student has met designated proficiencies. These practices are mandated to ensure that the students who are certified for the completion of their program qualify for the as per the NMC Competencies standards. Notably, the student’s practice proficiencies are ascertained during the sign-off process (Hart, 2010). Therefore, sign off-mentors must undertake preparation program to meet the requirements to determine whether students the competencies required by NMC during sign-off. The nursing and midwifery professions involve handling patients in delicate situations. Thus, it is essential to have professionals with competence and efficiency in handling patients through the required abilities and skills. During the practice, students are expected to gain competencies through the NMC programs or standards. The program ensures they deliver the required services effectively and competently in their nursing profession without the necessity of direct supervision. Nonetheless, it is the role of the sign off mentors to ensure that students ascribe to these competencies. Mentors are provided with necessary support and framework to ensure that they efficiently assess students in order to ascertain their knowledge and skills. The students often undertake NMC approved programs to ensure that they are registered as qualified professionals. These processes determine that only qualified and competent nurses whoa are fit for practices are introduced into the professional field. The main aim of these competence testing and practices are to ensure that the public is protected from unnecessary damage orchestrated by incompetent nurses without sufficient competencies for practice (Burton and Ormrod, 2011, p.78). The NMC has also given the mandate to sign-off mentors to ensure that students being released for professional practice are competently assessed. For competent assessment, mentors are required to be part of the inter-professional learning and working. This enables them to undertake an effective confirmation of the students’ achievement of proficiency The students on their last placement require the sign-off mentors for their accountability towards supporting and determining the pre-registration of the nursing students. It is because of this that the sign-off mentors are required to achieve certain criteria and must demonstrate the competence. The role of the sign-off mentors is also complimented by that of the student mentors in the NMC program. This body is responsible for not only confirming but also helping the students gain a breadth of experience in the process of demonstrating competence as either midwife or a nurse. According to the NMC, there are certain progression points where a student may not undertake but only the most qualified students. Therefore, they need to assess and confirmed if students have undoubtedly achieved the expected outcomes or met the competency level of the previous program is quite vital in the practice. Effective implementation can only be achieved if the mentors keep adequate and relevant records that appropriately help as supporting documents for them to identify whether or not a student has obtained adequate competence or proficiency. The some records should help towards promoting the students to the next program. Records for guidance and regular feedback must be adhered to in order to support and justify the decisions in determination of proficiency or competence (Burton and Ormrod, 2011, p.105). Signing-off mentors often assist in investigating the health of the nurses or the midwives during the pre-registration process. This ensures that the health of these health providers do not interfere with the health of patients to be served by the same people. Nonetheless, the process sometimes also includes determining the health condition of the students alongside their proficiencies (Elcock, 2012, p.96). Therefore, these practices aim at ensuring fit, healthy, and qualified professionals are introduced to the medical field. Additionally, it is the responsibility of the sign-off mentors to investigate and ascertain the conduct of nursing students before they are engaged into the nursing practice. Employers seek for professionals with good conduct, able to work under strict deadlines without direct supervision. There are set .parameters that helps the mentors to evaluate the characters of students, which is viewed because of individual behavior, conduct, and attitude. There are also convictions and cautions capable of putting the whole profession into utter disrepute and which are quite incompatible with professional registration. Such conducts are intolerable in nursing and midwifery professions, which a more intricate interaction with the patients (Lawson and Peate, 2009, p.45). Effective practice and safety delivery of service to the public are much dependent on the character of those who provide essential services. Good character also gives a spotlight to the expected responsibility of a professional. One must demonstrate that when left in full charge, everything can be well taken care of without the cause of alarm. A person with reputable character is worth trusted and hence can be entrusted (Murray et al., 2010) with the lives of the people who need the full Attention at most critical moments (Morrey and Sanchez, 2009, p.205). The sign-off mentors review the previous practice assessment that belongs to the students. Their role is to ensure that the concerns and issues enumerated by the previous student mentors are properly addressed. They must ensure that the students adhere to all the practice assessment with respect to follow up of any crucial issue and relevant concern. The sign-off mentors of midwifery students are also tasked with assessing the progression point alongside the assessment of the students' final practice as well as those who are awaiting the completion of applicable documentation. It is also during the confirmation procedure that the sign-off mentors are expected to prove a variety of abilities and conducts of the students of NMC before they are registered for full practice. The conduct of midwifery or a nursing student must demonstrate that they can prioritize and make it their first concern of taking care of the people under medical care. They should also be accessed if they are capable of treating and handling patients as individuals while respecting their dignity. Therefore, NMC emphasizes that midwives and nurses in their professional undertakings and responsibility must treat people as individuals and pay close attention to their dignity as human beings. Kindness, politeness, compassion, and care are the paramount qualities in delivering effective health care (Walsh, 2010). As a result, all the nursing and midwifery students are expected to ascribe to these fundamental requisites of good conduct and professional responsibility. The sign-off mentors are responsible for supporting and assessing both the nurses and midwives through Specialist practice programs. These are extremely essential for the students of most especially the nursing students. For students to obtain recordable qualifications necessary for the register of the nurses successfully, they need the sign-off mentors. This is in accordance with the resolutions and approval of the NMC as at September 2007. The resolution obligated the sign-off mentors to assess nursing students besides supporting them to achieve recordable qualifications in order to be registered as practicing nurses and midwifery. Notably, sometimes the sign-off mentors act as midwives supervisor especially in line with triennial review requirements that require them to support the midwives in the process of undertaking the standards of preparation and practice of supervisor of midwives programs. This is according to the 2006 resolutions of the NMC in which it approves the mentorship ability of the senior midwife supervisors. The mentors should ensure the student's response and adherence to collaboration with others in the provision of health care. The sign-off mentorship that are well trained to identify this must ensure that they establish the level of the students’ attention in as far as listening is concerned and how they can respond to the demands and needs of other people; most especially the patients. Are they good pin communication? Can they effectively communicate with others openly in order to convey messages clearly? Communication is paramount in this process and midwives and nurses must be well equipped with effective communication skills necessary for responding (Davis, 2011) to the needs of their patients (Wignes, 2006). There needs to be an understanding, or the nurses who are mostly the caregivers must be able to understand their patients in order to give them due attention. The process of confirmation is necessary in releasing professionals who are sensitive to the different values that different people have in response to patients’ attention (Davis, 2011). They should be able to understand the need and establish relevant health information in order to help patients in making critical and vital decisions towards their health care conditions. In order to make this process a success it is noteworthy that a professional must have the ability to engage people especially the families of the patients and other caregivers to arrive at the most appropriate health care decision. The confirmation or sign-off stage acts as a sieve in which persons or students who exhibit weaknesses in dealing with such fundamental issues are not qualified for professional registration (West et al., 2007, p.123). Critically, varied ranges of complex issues that require an in-depth understanding have surrounded the process of providing health care services. Health care is complicated in that even the best students may not understand all the required aspects. Therefore, the NMC introduced these programs of practice to give the students opportunity to gain more experience in handling people who are in dire need of professional services. Unfortunately, even this process requires a given level of professional support and assessment to ensure that the NMC students benefit optimally from the program (Evans and Tippins, 2008, p.216). The students or professionals must be able to work as part of team towards a common goal. The student must then stem from practice as an individual with a vision to promote the provision of health care and wellbeing of those under care (Murray et al., 2010). Therefore, it is the role of the sign-off mentors to ascertain these principles. The families of those under care must be respected alongside the caregivers of patients for a collective response to the need that enhance better delivery of health service towards promoting general health care. In order to do this, the training or practice must be able to equip professionals or the professional themselves with essential understanding of the process of providing health care services (West et al. 2007, p.123). After understanding the role of every member, it is essential to demonstrate cooperation within the team and respecting the skills exhibited by others and playing critical roles in decision-making. Without professional assessment and accountability, the health care providers or students practicing health professions can never meet all these dire health care services. Notably, the sign-off mentors must ensure that a student has the ability to conform to the combination of expertise in a team geared towards delivering better results. The mentor must ensure that a student indicates indiscriminative relations with members of the team before approval since this is extremely critical in sabotaging the vision of a dedicated team. The mentors are essential for this process because they help the students integrate well within the framework of team playing (Caulfield, 2011). The mentor should be able to respond to the questions and challenges that a student undergoes in the process of teamwork (Davis, 2011, p.74). The sign-off mentor has the capacity to determine whether a student is an active team player who respect others and deal with every team member without any discrimination (Gibb and Arulkumaran, 2008, p.211). The main intention of sign-off interview is to establish whether a student being released for registration can be able to provide a high-level care and standardized professional practice. Moreover, the mentors must ensure that the student identify and perform within the limits of competence. Students who are given the green light for professional practice are those who have certified the obligations of professionalism and demonstrated the abilities to use acquired skills and knowledge in responding to the demands of the patients (West et al., 2007, p.123). They indicate that they have obtained the right education to be entrusted with the lives of others who are in critical health attention. Therefore, sign-off mentor approve the qualified students for registration as advised by the NMC. The students must then ensure that they are supported by the mentors and given adequate supervision to help them pass through the sign-off stage that allows them to be qualified professionals. The certification is often ascertained with valid certification and registration contained in a practicing license. It is also the role of sign-off mentors to ascertain that the certified nurses and midwives through assessing their appropriateness in handling medical records by keeping clear, legible, accurate, timed, and up to date records, which are extra-ordinarily influential in the delivery of health care (Murray et al., 2010). The sign-off mentor also identifies the students’ understanding of both local and general health policies (Wignes, 2006). It is worth noting that it is the role and responsibility of the mentors to ensure that nursing students are accountable and responsible for proper and effective health care provision to patients (Davis, 2011, p.97). However, the NMC is obligated to identify and define the roles and accountability accounts that these mentors used to apply to ensure proper and adequate measures and measurable in practices of the nursing students. Therefore, it is the role of mentors to provide the public with nurses and midwives who are sufficiently qualified and with exemplary proficiencies and competency in delivering proper health care services to patients. Moreover, the NMC programs are significant in leading the mentors towards integrating the nurses and releasing the only qualified and efficient nurses to the public domain. Thus, it is the responsibility of the student practicing nursing to understand roles and responsibilities that are thereafter used to gauge fit for their services or hiring. Reference List Bowling, A. (2009). Research methods in health: investigating health and health services. Maidenhead, Berkshire, England: McGraw Hill/Open University Press. Bryant, R. (2005). Regulation, roles and competency development. Geneva, Switzerland: International Council of Nurse. Burton, R. & Ormrod, G. (2011). Nursing: transition to professional practice. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Caulfield, H. 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