The role of the mentor in clinical practice is well recognised nationally and internationally as being pivotal to ensuring the quality of the nursing student learning experience (Saarikoski & Leino-Kilpi 2002 Nursing & Midwifery Council (NMC) 2006/2008 NMC 2010 Huybrecht et al 2011 and Royal College of Nursing (RCN) 2015). The importance of the supervising mentor role relates to RCN’s (2015) acknowledgement that mentors are effectively gatekeepers of the nursing workforce ensuring that qualifying nurses are fit for practice. The United Kingdom’s NMC fully implemented its ‘Standards to support learning and assessment in practice’ in 2008 thereby changing the landscape of mentor preparation and the support of undergraduate students preparing for the role of registrant (NMC 2010). As part of these NMC standards experienced clinical mentors are now expected to support registered nurses who are learning the mentor role. NHS Education for Scotland (NES) (2013) has since clarified expectations of experienced mentors in this situation and they are now widely referred to as ‘supervising mentors’ throughout Scotland. The term supervising mentor is also being used more frequently across the United Kingdom.
This paper will report the findings and recommendations from a recently completed PhD study which used constructivist grounded theory methods (Charmaz 2010) to explore the relatively new role of supervising mentor. These findings are timely as the NMC is currently reviewing its Standards for Pre-registration Nursing Education (NMC 2010) and the NMC (2015) Quality Assurance Framework; it is hoped that the recommendations from this study will be useful to inform debate around future mentorship developments and the development of the supervising mentor role. Equally whilst this study was conducted in the UK the role of the clinical mentor is common within nurse education globally and the recommendations should have international relevance.
