Learning For Students in Clinical Practice - Essay Example

Running Head: MENTOR FACILITATION LEARNING FOR IN CLINICAL PRACTICE By City, State Date Learning For Students in Clinical Practice Introduction According to the NMC, a nurse, midwife, or professional community public health caregiver can be a mentor. Such a mentor should foster learning, oversee, and evaluate students in a clinical practice context. These roles can be carried out effectively through several ways. These ways are achievable by breaking down the roles of a mentor in clinical practice. Roles played by mentors create a serious aspect in making sure that a student grasps the best experience of the clinical education program. The NMC contends that the stage 2 mentor can only achieve maximum individual potential amongst his or her students by facilitating the selection of appropriate learning strategies to integrate learning from practice and academic experience and supporting student in critically reflecting upon their experiences in future learning (Clay and Wade, 2001, p. 213). The following essay breaks down and discusses these two responsibilities critically in a clinical practice context. How Mentors Can Effectively Facilitate Learning For Students In Clinical Practice First, a stage 2 mentor should facilitate a relationship that is conducive to nursing with his or her students (Clauson, Wejr, Frost, Mcrae, and Straight, 2011, p. 315). Research findings on the impacts of the clinical setting for education have concentrated on human interactions instead of physical situations. The same findings indicate that clinical surroundings influence learning. For instance, students of clinical practice who had a place for carrying out their meetings and storing their possessions felt like the learning setting was welcoming and respectful. This frame of mind extended to the clinical personnel at the clinical practice setting. Consequently, a student who feels welcomed and respected by clinical personnel will reflect the same attitudes towards his or her classmates and patients. In addition, the feeling of being a crucial participant of a group raises inspiration to learn. These feelings and attitudes are achievable through the effective facilitation of student learning by mentors. Second, as an evaluator of clinical practice, a stage 2 mentor should oversee students who are building clinical skills (Charneia, 2007, p. 3). Studies carried out to determine the type of communication and relationships between students and stage 2 mentors produced findings that argue their importance. Students recorded the profound impact communication with their mentors towards their practice scores. A number of students in these studies articulated other mental features that influence clinical learning. For example, mentors who hinted that the student was unskilled or incapable of learning were favored over those who kept such crucial observations concealed. An overall agreement that responses from mentors enable students to realize their setbacks arose from the study findings (Pellatt, 2006, p. 338). This agreement led to the discovery that realizing such crucial things about their learning abilities enabled students to enhance their knowledge and competence. Many participating students said the positive responses motivated them further towards the practical cause. In addition, welcoming or unbiased outlooks during response sessions fostered learning. This could only mean that the students demanded well-informed and qualified stage 2 mentors in clinical practice. Such students argued that they grasped more when experienced mentors introduced new and applicable knowledge, revealed new mediations, and aided them in performing these mediations. As an evaluator, a stage 2 mentor should record student progress and debates in his or her evaluation or skills book. Evaluation and responsibility roles of stage 2 mentors are crucial for facilitating a learning environment for students in clinical practice. Mentors embark on the evaluation of their students’ performance. This enables mentors to be liable for the choices they make. This is achievable by first having in-depth knowledge and insight of their responsibility at each phase of a student’s education program (Wood, Harben-Obasuyi, and Richardson, 2011, p. 525). Mentors have to be report to the respective clinical board of professionals for the choices they make in an effort to pass or fail a student when evaluating criteria and required skills. Second, mentors have to facilitate professional progress, personal growth, and responsibility by backing students in clinical practice (Plack, Dunfee, Rindflesch, and Driscoll, 2008, p. 33). Third, mentors have to show an extent of insight of the evaluation approaches and the capacity to add to the entire evaluation procedure as a supporter of the learning and teaching units (Henderson and Eaton, 2013, p. 138). Fourth, mentors have to give positive responses to students and aid them in recognizing future crucial learning requirements and decisions (Haycock, 2008, p. 8). Handling students failing the clinical practice has to be in line with due process. This way, these students might improve their performance and skills for secure and proficient practice. The students can also be capable of comprehending the source of the students’ failure and the consequences of this outcome in their future practice. Fifth, mentors have to be responsible for verifying that students have achieved or failed the professional board criteria and skills as expected during clinical practice (Finnerty, and Collington, 2013, p. 575). Lastly, mentors sustain coexisting and accurate records of every student’s accomplishments in clinical practice. Here, the mentor signs the records in the practice evaluation and class turnout documents. Signing is proof that the mentor acknowledges the students’ realization of the learning program and professional board expectations. As a result, the students are now suited for clinical practice. A stage 2 mentor ought to embark on at least three official meetings with the student in the course of the clinical practice as an evaluator. A stage 2 mentor also ought to offer a professional example for his or her students. In addition, the mentor should debate open chances for learning and push them to partake in a variety of undertakings in the clinical placement field (Plack,, Dunfee, Rindflesch, and Driscoll, 2008, pp. 34). Coaching mentors in stage 2 should endorse learning through ordinary responses with his or her students. Stage 2 mentors should also work along with their students. This way, their students can remind themselves that they grasp new knowledge from the mentor’s practice. A stage 2 mentor should also improve his or her students’ education by debating the reasons, activities, and choices made while providing healthcare. A coaching stage 2 mentor should ask his or her students to propose topics for debate. This responsibility can lead to the realization of the students’ education needs and results (Charneia, 2007, pp. 5). Lastly, stage 2 mentors serving as facilitators make students feel welcome to the practice area. Such mentors should note that first impressions last. As a result, stage 2 mentors ought to present the staff to the student and familiarize them with the medical area. Facilitating mentors also familiarize students with the academic outcomes and skills the clinical, learning organization requires of them by the end of the placement (Lattanzi, Campbell, Dole, and Palombaro, 2011, pp. 1514). Stage 2 mentors interact with their students as facilitators and analyze their clinical experience (Recker-Hughes, Wetherbee, Buccieri, Fitzpatricktimmerberg, and Stolfi, 2014, pp. 15). As facilitators, stage 2 mentors also collaborate with the program or placement’s Education Coordinator to build their clinical professionalism by inquiring about and learning particular information and placement packages for clinical practice. Stage 2 mentors are accountable for the formative and evaluation of the academic progress of their students in practice. In this case, mentors in clinical settings collaborate with their students, Education Coordinators, and other professional peers within clinical setting. This allows students to accomplish set learning goals. Mentors require continued interaction and support from Education Coordinators and other professional peers to share learning and build skills. Stage 2 mentors should realize that they are members of the learning department. Certain mentor-associated elements contribute to this membership. First, mentors notify personnel of the goals of training and things expected of the students by the learning facility. Second, mentors offer positive responses about their students. Third, mentors should have and share informed clinical knowledge. Fourth, mentors conduct meetings at the onset of the clinical practice to notify the department’s personnel of the students. Fifth, stage 2 mentors, particularly contact clinical students frequently. Lastly, mentors are aware of the students’ ideas and anticipations of the personnel at the learning facility (Hunnerkopf, 2007, p. 59). The mentor has the decisive role of validating the skills, benchmarks, or talents of his or her clinical students. As a result, it is vital for mentors to support their students and make sure they sustain and achieve professional criteria. The nursing and midwifery standards of the European Union are an exemplar of how mentors should support students in a clinical setting. As a student of nursing or midwifery in the EU, one is required to meet the qualifications put down by the EU and supported by the professional council of mentorship. This council, the Nursing and Midwifery Council of the UK, first requires all clinical practice students to embark on achieving 2,300 hours of assignment experience. This requirement makes up half of the entire practice program or 60% of 156/78 weeks of the student’s time as a midwife or nursing intern (Jessiman, Matheson, and Murray, 2011, 804). Proof of meeting this requirement has to be presented when the student registers for professional application. During this program, the student has to make sure his or her assignment hours are documented in the precise and formal ways. Students unable to go to any part of their assignments mean they cannot realize the required number of practice hours. In this case, the students have to account for the lost time at a set date (Price, Hastie, Duffy, Ness, and Mccallum, 2011, pp. 807). As a result, the professional applications of such students are postponed until the required assignment hours of clinical practice are realized successfully. These requirements call for the effective support of mentors who make it easier to endure. UK’s NMC offers suggestions of proof that mentors have supported students effectively. First insightful accounts let professional bodies that oversee the clinical practice see the students’ progress. Second, mentors should implement teaching strategies used to foster learning processes. Third, a book of mentoring activities carried out with the students ought to be present. Fourth, action devices that endorse fostering student progress or accomplishments should also be present. The fifth form of evidence of student progress with mentors is the improvement of student’s resources. Lastly, engagement in the academic audit ascertains the sum of students that the field can foster proficiently (Price, Hastie, Duffy, Ness, and Mccallum, 2011, p. 411). A majority of mentors in clinical practice are doctors with wide experience of medical work. The same mentors are ready to support the personal and work-related progresses of students. Clinical work facilities mostly hire mentors from university clinics, small infirmaries, and any major caregiving centers. This means mentors left medical school years ago and only a handful of them are fully familiar with learning profiles. As a result, the clinical institutions have to ensure mentors meet certain criteria to facilitate an effective learning environment for students (Elcigil and Sari, 2013, pp. 120). This assuring process can be problematic for academic developers. This is because professional clinical bodies have to present the fundamental views of the learning profiles of students. Making mentors realize that the personal and professional image of a student in clinical practice is the center of mentorship. Mentors have to draw on their usage of student responses and ways they can improve student learning. For instance, a supportive and influential response to a student ought to revolve around the crucial factors of the student’s perspective. In clinical practice, clinical facilities should begin with preparatory meetings for new mentors. Learning settings concentrate on what learning profiles and student responses mean. These meetings can be carried out every semester. During these meetings, the professional body should offer grounds for peer reflection (Ward, 2012, p. 803). The facility’s professional body should problematize the double role assumed by mentors as being helpful, future workmates, coaches, and evaluators. Many clinical officers cannot combine meetings made for academic improvement and peer provision. This is a challenge that effective mentors can solve by effectively facilitating a learning environment for clinical practice students. Mentors should also be ready to help students looking for guidance through proper sources on a variety of pastoral issues. These issues might entail homesickness, seclusion, relationship problems, harassment, grief, health matters, worries pertaining to educational capacities, and monetary problems. Where the mentor thinks it is suitable, he or she might offer counsel to students looking for extra support from groups, individuals, or support amenities. These services have to be more suited for the particular requirements of the student, which can be accessed in the student guide. Students should go to their mentors to ask that they back their ideas in a student body. It is ideally okay for a mentor to back up their student in this manner so long as there is no conflict of interest (Pellatt, 2006, pp. 337). Stage 2 mentors can play certain roles in an effort to support students’ learning and evaluation in clinical practice. First, mentors can make sure they evaluate students accepted by NMC before to clinical learning programs before application. Second, stage 2 mentors who have met extra standards should make the last evaluation of practice and report to the respective professional body that the set requirements for admission have been realized. These requirements also entail the documenting of professional clinical practice standard on the register of the applying student. Third, the mentor should hand the evaluation and approval of a student’s performance in the clinical practice to the professor for marking. Fourth, students embarking on programs certified by professional clinical practice bodies should have mentors for evaluation and support. This is because such advanced programs result in the student’s admission to the sub-part of the clinic’s section of the register. Using the NMC of EU as an example, stage 2 mentors are required to make the last evaluations of clinical practice and verify to the professional body that the required skills for registration have been met (Mcgeehan, English, Shenberger, Tracy, and Smego, 2013, pp. 77). Conclusion In clinical practice, the responsibilities of a stage 2 mentor are a standard established by a professional board. As a result, a stage 2 mentor who utilizes due respect should be on the same place as a professional record and offering services in the same field of expertise as the student (Haycock, 2008, pp. 3). Students with disabilities in clinical practice in the EU have a separate, special section when it comes to mentorship roles and support. UK’s NMC acknowledges the significance of backing all students towards accomplishing their full potential in both practical and educational learning settings. Programs certified by the NMC accept all applicants so long as they meet established requirements and standards of clinical practice. These criteria and standards entail admission requirements for educational background, health, and character stipulated in the criteria of proficiency for the respective program. Any academic and non-academic requirement established by a professional body in clinical practice requires the contribution of mentors (Carlisle, Calman, and Ibbotson, 2009, pp. 716). In this case, mentors ought to add to the learning processes of their students irrespective of their physical abilities. Both handicapped and abled students should receive fair and effective support from mentors in clinical practice. References Carlisle, C, Calman, L, & Ibbotson, T 2009, Practice-based learning: the role of practice education facilitators in supporting mentors, Nurse Education Today, 29, 7, pp. 715-721, CINAHL Plus with Full Text, EBSCOhost, viewed 6 July 2014. 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