Important aspects of mentorship practices

A good relationship between the registered nurse mentor and the student is key to mentorship practices. As a nurse mentor, you are also an important role model, someone who communicates, shows and exercises high quality nursing care.  The nurse mentor is also the one who facilitates different learning situations and helps the students to connect theory and practice.

A nurse mentor is not expected to have an expert role and know everything. A good mentor takes the individual student as a point of departure. Students are different from each other, they have different learning prerequisites and learning needs, even though the clinical educational requirements and goals are the same for everyone. It is important to supervise students in such a way that it contributes to increased awareness, where students use their own resources and are stimulated to see and discover the relationship between theory, factual knowledge, and practice. As a nurse mentor, you can ask questions that stimulate students to reflect, as well as encourage them to actively seek knowledge in the syllabus and other literature that you can discuss together. 

Søren Kirkegaard describes the very core of good guidance:

“If one is truly to succeed in leading a person to a specific place, one must first and foremost take care to find him where he is and begin there. 
 
 This is the secret in the entire art of helping”

Søren Kierkegaard