The role of the mentor in organising, managing and leading programmes of learning in clinical education - Essay Example

?Critically explore the role of the mentor in organising, managing and leading programmes of learning in clinical education Introduction These days, clinical practice is one of the most dynamic activities in the world which requires substantial knowledge and learning enhancement activities. This is the very reason why mentors play crucial tasks in this area. They need to ensure that learning is ensured at its best at the highest possible level. Not only that, patients are becoming sophisticated which makes them to demand highest possible quality care that they deserve. This means more strong efforts towards obtaining optimum learning are needed for mentors to substantially explore or initiate in order to make sure quality transfer of knowledge with their learners, leading further to excellent patient care in the long run. In this paper, the proponent tries to give emphasis on the importance of mentors in organising, managing and leading programmes of learning in clinical education particularly on the leadership aspect which involves facilitation, supervision, assessment, and support. Facilitating learning Facilitating learning is very important, as its very nature is very complex ranging from different aspects of the body of knowledge. Learning from the behavioral perspective is a changed of behavior; and it is associated with changes inside of a person from cognitive perspective (Brockbank and McGill, 2006). Learning is one of the most important things to acquire in this world. It is essential because it is viewed as the result of how humans adapt to their environment (Murre, 1992). In nursing career, educating others is an essential intervention which also depicts the importance of learning (Bastable, 2008). All of these substantially illustrate why it is important to facilitate learning. Mentors therefore should be able to come up with simple or basic ideas in order to facilitate learning and ensure that there is increase in knowledge of their learners as far as mentoring is concerned. In nursing, mentoring is necessary and the role of mentors is simply as facilitators emphasising learning in an effective and practical way. Adult learning can be well facilitated using experiential learning, which means acquiring substantial knowledge can be appropriately achieved out from somebody’s significant experiences. In fact, one of the most familiar adages puts it, “Experience teaches us best.” This can be further elaborated from Kolb’s theory of experiential learning. Illustration 1: Kolb’s cycle of experiential learning (Quinn, 2000). In this theory, Kolb’s emphasised four generic adaptive abilities to reach effective learning and these involve concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation (Quinn, 2000). It is therefore the role of mentors to effectively organise activities that will allow full immersion of their students into concrete and fresh experiences. Along the way, mentors have to manage important activities that are crucial in the creation of learning experiences. It is not just enough to organise activities, but leading and management is necessary because everything that the mentors do should be considered a guiding path for students to effectively take in order to facilitate learning at a highest maximum level as possible. Students on the other hand must be able to learn from their experiences by reflecting on them. Furthermore, it is also important for them to come up with significant concepts out from their personal observations on their experiences. Finally they have to apply whatever theories they have learned. All of these are important things that students must do while their mentors are facilitating for their learning (Quinn, 2000). It is in line with these that regarding their ability to facilitate learning, mentors must be able to support learning in practice, they have to demonstrate effective time management and leadership skills, and should be able to organise students’ clinical experience (Quinn, 2000). Another important point in facilitating learning is about providing strategies for effective clinical teaching (Gaberson and Oermann, 2010). Mentors should support learning in practice by actually formulating strategies in order to ensure effective clinical teachings. These strategies are very important components in facilitating learning because they would ensure effective or sufficient transfer of knowledge or information. Supervision in learning in clinical practice Aside from facilitating the students in their learning in clinical education, mentors have the role to supervise them. This supervision is evident on the supervision cycle model of Goldhammer and his colleagues in 1980. Regarding this supervision, it is an integral part of educator’s role (a) to initiate pre-observation stage which establishes rapport, reviews plans and discusses and rehearses changes; (b) the next stage is about educator’s actual observation of the session and taking into account noting issues for future discussion; (c) the third stage is about the analysis of the data that educator’s gathered from observation and consequently followed by strategy planning for feedbacks; (d) finally, both educator and student should initiate individual analyses and undergo plans for modification (Rose and Best, 2005). Supervision therefore is a hands-on activity that tries not only to facilitate learning, but more so in giving emphasis on experiential and tacit knowledge (Gould and Baldwin, 2004). In clinical practice, supervision is more like a form of control which the mentors have over their students. As control, supervision is there to ensure quality or desirable outcomes. It helps guarantee learners are motivated to learn or are able to acquire substantial knowledge in the process. It is important for mentors to supervise in the learning of their students because it would ensure proper outcomes in the long run, like achievement of substantial knowledge. With supervision, students have important paths or goals to undertake so as to ensure their maximum learning capacity. Mentors therefore are very influential on one’s lifelong learning and professional development. It is in this reason that mentors usually serve as important guides of the students. Mentors should be efficient or effective in this activity. This means further that they should have clear picture on what path to take, and what are the things needed by the students. For instance, effective supervision of students would mean knowing what the students expected to learn in the first place (Austin and Hopkins, 2004). Mentors could not effectively supervise the students without prior understanding of their needs and essential expectations. Although mentors have important knowledge that they want to impart with the students, it is also important for them as part of their effective supervision to understand the prevailing needs or expectations of these learners. Clinical practice involves complex knowledge or ideas surrounding humanity and their health, quality and effective care. Supervision is crucial to one’s learning of these issues because it would ensure substantial organisation, management and leadership in facilitating the actual learning process. For example, in nursing, mentors should be able to ensure good working relationship with their students in order to promote how this relationship be effectively conveyed to an actual patient. Supervision therefore is an integral part of effective leadership as it aims to guide learners in the best possible ways. It tries to guide students to explore the best possible options in which the bottom line is to expose them to various experiences that would enhance their knowledge and learning potential in their fields. Assessment in clinical practice Mentors in the field of clinical education, particularly in nursing are ensuring competence of their students (Stuart, 2003). The very reason for qualifying examinations in nursing is to test whether the students are competent enough to proceed and pursue in their career in nursing. In the UK, nursing students are obliged to undergo series of assessments for the following reasons: quality control, entry into the possession, motivation of students, and to support teaching and learning (Stuart, 2003). In the age of tough competition in the health industry, patient-centred care is necessary in order to ensure high patient satisfaction rate and future trust. This is the reason why there is substantial effort needed within the clinical practice to exercise quality control activities. Quality from the perspectives of the patients is evident as a very important component of a good or excellent service. These ideas are important to be understood by the nursing students for instance who are trying to learn the complexities involved in the clinical field and health care. In the first place, they should have gained considerable knowledge in these fields, but it is hard to measure them without prior assessment. It is therefore the role of their mentors to assess their knowledge in their fields in order to make certain the level of their proficiency and capacity to deliver the required patient care. Assessment as we know it is somewhat a form of evaluative effort which usually gives considerable ideas to the mentors surrounding the level of proficiency achieved by their learners. The result usually paves the way for either enhancing the acquired learning of their students or reinforcing something more to complete what is substantially required. Assessment is important because it tries to measure the level of progress of the learner (Miller et al., 1998). Mentors therefore should initiate assessment with their students especially in clinical practice because learners’ progress is important in this field as far as proficiency is considered of great importance in it. Monitoring learners’ progress is one specific example of mentors’ role towards knowledge transfer. Thus, it is important to do this so as there would be enough bases on what to expect from the learners and what to substantially provide them with. Mentors should ensure that their learners have achieved what they believed are essential in their fields. Mentors are not just to give assessment, but it is with a purpose in order to measure the level of proficiency of the learners and to substantially design more productive effort in order to improve or enhance them more. As a result, mentors always have the opportunity to improve their approach or designs towards learning significant knowledge in the presence of an assessment. It is a significant tool to help the students receive what they need to know more in order to optimise their learning on a specific area or field. It is their mentors who have the potential to gauge their level of improvement and there would be substantial adjustments in the learning process to be made upon knowing it. Support in clinical practice Mentors’ support in clinical practice is important. This is the very reason why students need to learn from them in order to gain practical experience, improve their technical proficiency in it and increase their knowledge in clinical practice. In nursing for instance, patient care is the bottom line of various learning obtained by the students. In order to ensure they would become the best in their fields, students need their mentors so as to gain considerable insights and the best strategic techniques in addressing the needs of their patients. Mentors play a significant role in imparting the appropriate, right and substantial knowledge with their students. This is a form of support not just to enhance the students’ competency in the days to come, but as a way to contribute to the ever increasing body of knowledge in clinical activities and practices. For example, the The right principles in nursing for instance should be well established within every nursing student so as to give them the right foundation in their future career. This is also a form of support which is included in learning activity. Learning is a necessity in clinical practice. For instance, experts in this field have to learn from time to time so as to make them more reliable in whatever situation that may arise and they might face. This is also a form of principle that is applicable to nursing activity. Students prior to becoming certified professionals in the clinical practice should undergo necessary learning, but they should not acquire this by themselves. They need mentors to teach, train and above all to support them prior to achieving their individual future objectives in life. The evidence-based learning for instance, requires mentors who are experts in understanding the importance of research and practical experience in nursing activity. There are indeed many things to learn in nursing especially on how it could be further improved in great detail, but the point of learning and mentoring is to ensure that students are given the appropriate fundamental techniques or knowledge necessary in their respective fields. Support in clinical practice is more on addressing the needs of the students (Gopee, 2007). This is the very point that each mentor should take into account prior to formulating important support activities for the students in clinical practice. Understanding the needs of the learners is a form of initial support because everything should start from it prior to designing the actual learning activity. Leadership in clinical practice Planning for mentoring and assessing competence requires leadership skills on the part of the mentors (Gopee, 2007). In this way, mentors learned to plan, create dynamic advocacy to the needs of their students, prioritise support of their students and provide feedbacks for future improvement (Gopee, 2007). These days, excellence in clinical practice is highly associated with nursing leadership (Daly et al., 2004). Clinical experts are needed in order to address the increasing body of knowledge, clinical information and skills in the field of clinical practice (Marshall, 2010). All of these issues substantially consider that mentoring is a crucial task particularly in areas where learning has to be optimised. For instance, evidence-based practice in healthcare is a form of leadership in using research to ensure learning in clinical practice (Houser and Oman, 2011). This requires substantial knowledge and the mentors are expected to formulate the best learning programme prior to imparting the actual knowledge that each learner should be required to receive. Clinical leaders in nursing can be those nurses who employ the best nursing practice based on extensive and cumulative knowledge they have (Benner et al., 2011). This can only be made possible if the mentors have significant excellence in clinical practice which can be acquired by exercising leadership in the healthcare. This leadership would mean implementing the best plan in the learning process that would pave the way for excellence in clinical practice. Conclusion The proponent tries to discuss the importance of mentors in organising, managing and leading programmes of learning in clinical education. In doing these, there are various options to take on the part of the mentor, but among them it is important to consider facilitation, supervision, assessment, and support as integral parts of leadership in learning in clinical practice on the part of the mentor. All of these would help ensure that the appropriate organisation, management and leading programmes of learning in clinical education are taken into the best account. Mentors are considered important agents in the learning process involved in clinical practice. They are there to ensure that the transfer of knowledge is successful creating more significant proficiency on the part of the learners. Their specific tasks in the process of the knowledge transfer are crucial because it would mean they need to facilitate, supervise, assess, support and stand as a leader in the learning process involved in clinical practice. Furthermore, these serve as the mentors’ eventual or specific role in order to guarantee learners’ excellence in the highly competitive healthcare together with its corresponding clinical practice. References Austin, M. J., and Hopkins, K. M. (2004) Supervision as collaboration in the human services: building a learning culture. London: SAGE. Bastable, S. B. (2008) Nurse as educator: principles of teaching and learning for nursing practice. 3rd ed. London: Jones & Bartlett Learning. Benner, M. S. P., Kyriakidis, P. H., and Stannard, D. (2011) Clinical wisdom and interventions in acute and critical care: a thinking-in-action approach. New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company. Brockbank, A., and McGill, I. (2006) Facilitating reflective learning through mentoring & coaching. London: Kogan Page Publishers. Daly, J., Speedy, S., and Jackson, D. (2004) Nursing Leadership. Marrickville, NSW: Elsevier Australia. Gaberson, K. B., and Oermann, M. H. (2010) Clinical teaching strategies in nursing. 3rd ed. New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company. Gopee, N. (2007) Mentoring and Supervision in Healthcare. London: SAGE. Gould, N., and Baldwin, M. (2004) Social work, critical reflection, and the learning organization. England: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. Houser, J., and Oman, K. (2011) Evidence-based practice: an implementation guide for healthcare organisations. London: Jones & Bartlett Publishers. Marshall, E. (2010) Transformational Leadership in Nursing: From Expert Clinician to Influential Leader. New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company. Miller, A. H., Imrie, B. W., and Cox, K. (1998) Student assessment in higher education: a handbook for assessing performance. London: Routledge. Murre, J. (1992) Learning and categorization in modular neural networks. Hillsdale, NJ: Routledge. Quinn, F. M. (2000) The principles and practice of nurse education. 4th ed. London: Nelson Thornes. Rose, M., and Best, D. (2005) Transforming practice through clinical education, professional supervision, and mentoring. London: Elsevier Health Sciences. Stuart, C. C. (2003) Assessment, supervision, and support in clinical practice: a guide for nurses, midwives, and other health professionals. London: Elsevier Health Sciences. Read More