Kontakt 2012, 14(2):137-144 | DOI: 10.32725/kont.2012.015

Evaluation of mentors in view of nursing studentsNursing

Věra Šrubařová^*, Renáta Zeleníková

Ostravská univerzita v Ostravě, Lékařská fakulta, Ústav ošetřovatelství a porodní asistence

Clinical practice is an important part of the qualification study of nursing, which is performed under professional supervision of mentors. The evaluation of mentors brings a contribution to determining the monitoring efficacy.
The target of the work presented here was to determine how the nursing students evaluate mentors of clinical practice in four fields of interest as follows: relationships between mentors and students, mentor personality, style of conducting the professional practice, teaching process.
The group included 169 students of second and third years of the full-time study in the bachelor study branch General Nurse at three selected working sites. A questionnaire was used for the data accumulation. Respondents evaluated their mentors based on the Likert scale from 1 to 5 in the following four areas: relationships between mentors and students, mentor personality, style of conducting the professional practice, teaching process. Students first evaluated a mentor, who was considered most appropriate in terms of the cooperation during professional practice and then a mentor, whose cooperation exerted most problems. The data accumulation was implemented in a period from the beginning of December 2010 to the end of January 2011.
The highest evaluation of mentors, who exerted the best cooperation, included the following items: experienced specialist in his/her practice, easy contact, conduction to independence at an appropriate level with taking account the patient safety, willingness to explain problems. The teaching process exerted the worst degree of evaluation. Weaker points of all the mentors evaluated include forming of situations and tasks enhancing the application of theory to practice and supporting critical thinking and enthusiasm in the clinical education.
Research results suggest the following recommendations for mentors: to form situations and tasks, which enhance the application of the theory to the practice, to support critical thinking and to provide the students with more feedbacks in terms of their progress. On the other hand, it is also necessary to motivate and support mentors in their positive attitude to the teaching process.

Keywords: mentor; student; professional practice; evaluation; nursing

Received: January 18, 2012; Accepted: March 16, 2012; Published: June 22, 2012  Show citation