This article outlines some effective tips that mentees must follow to find a great mentor during a nursing apprenticeship. Keep reading to learn more!

In today’s fast-paced world, nursing is a rapidly evolving field within the medical profession. According to a report by the World Health Organisation (WHO), there are 29 million nurses and 2.2 million midwives across the world.

Do you also want to build your career in this field? Then, a nursing apprenticeship is the best way to gain hands-on experience before entering the professional world. However, most students face challenges during this training program, but having a nursing mentor can be the game-changer.

A nursing mentor guides the aspirants to navigate the complexities of this apprenticeship and lay the foundation of a successful career. Nonetheless, the question is, how to find a mentor for this apprenticeship. We have come up with the answer in this guide.

Keep reading to learn more.

Key Highlights:

• Nursing is an emerging field in today’s fast-moving world, which is why most students want to pursue their career in this field.
• For then starting a nurse apprenticeship is one of the best ways to start their career. However, finding a good mentor during this apprenticeship needs some tips to be followed.
• These tips include determining your goals, considering the mentor who inspires you, using your professional network, exploring the mentor online, joining a nursing mentorship program, working for better communication, and always staying respectful.
• With this, consider some key traits in a nursing mentor, such as his eagerness to share his knowledge, his communication skills, his ability to pivot, and his habit of giving positive feedback, that you must consider while choosing a mentor.

Before moving on to the ways to find a nursing mentor, let’s first get to know who is a nursing mentor is.

Who is a Nursing Mentor?

A nurse mentor can be an objective advisor, teacher, and a trusted friend who assists the mentee to learn and polish their nursing skills. In other words, a nurse mentor trains the unprofessional and inexperienced nursing professional through his knowledge and experience.

During a nursing apprenticeship, the mentee and mentor agree to work together to achieve mutual goals that are designed to polish the intern’s knowledge, mental abilities, and critical thinking skills.

Also, the mentorship of the nursing mentor swept away from day-to-day guidance; he/she helps the mentees in every stage of their career. We can say that there is no end to the benefits that a mentee can enjoy after getting assistance from a qualified mentor.

Below is a list of the key benefits of having a professional nursing mentor. Have a look at that.

• Boost Confidence: One of the key advantages of having a mentor during a nursing apprenticeship program is that it boosts confidence, which is essential to deal with the critical situations in the nursing field.
• Improve Patient Care: When the aspirants seek assistance from a highly-qualified nursing mentor, they become more focused, care-oriented, and efficient while providing care to the patients. This focused and effective care further led to better patient outcomes.
• Professional Growth: When a mentee seeks assistance from a mentor during the nursing apprenticeship, he/she get a chance to learn essential nursing skills that are important for their professional growth and career.
• Support Against Burnout: A nursing mentor not only provides help in building a professional career but also provides emotional support to the mentees in managing the stress and burnout that they face during work.
• Career Advancement: The best part of seeking assistance from a mentor during studentship is that students get a great chance to get guidance on career paths, build networks, and achieve their long-term career goals.

Thus, seeking assistance from a qualified mentor during a registered nurse apprenticeship is important for developing a career in the nursing field. Another important key to pursuing a strong career in this field is writing a successful nursing dissertation. This dissertation is an important milestone in the academic career.

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8 Tips to Follow for Finding a Good Mentor During a Nursing Apprenticeship

Finding a good mentor is important to build a strong mentorship during the apprenticeship in nursing. Having a strong mentorship, mutual respect, and strong areas of communication can allow you to unlock the potential of the nursing field.

On the contrary, a weak relationship with the mentor can lead to misunderstanding, diminish confidence, and hinder professional growth. Therefore, it is important to find the best mentor during this apprenticeship.

Have a look at the key tips that you must follow while finding the right mentor for an apprenticeship.

1: Determine Your Goals

Before searching for a mentor for your nursing apprenticeship, it is important to determine what you hope to get from this mentorship relationship. So, it is good to sit at a quiet place and define what you want to achieve, whether you want to polish your skills, advance your career, improve your weak areas, or learn how to maintain a work-life balance.

By determining your goals, you can give a clear direction to yourself and your mentor about what exactly you are expecting from this deep professional relationship. Moreover, with the clear objectives, you will make sure that your mentorship is focused, aim-oriented, and purposeful.

With this, you can get more effective guidance for your career when your aims are crystal clear. By knowing your specified goals, you can measure the progress of your goals along the way and make sure that your and your mentor’s objectives align with each other.

2: Consider a Mentor Who Inspires You

Always consider that individual whose working style, ethics, and expertise you admire. The best place to find someone you are inspired by is your workplace, where you can get inspired by your colleague, supervisor, or even a peer.

Seeking assistance from these professionals can lay a foundation for mutual respect and motivation. Because it is natural that when you are truly inspired by someone, there are higher chances to stay engaged, follow their guidance, and be thrilled to apply their knowledge in your practice.

Thus, if you find someone at your workplace whose career goals and objectives align with your goals, don’t hesitate to reach them and show your interest in working with them. Many experienced nursing professionals are eager to share their experience and knowledge with others. So, never waste time thinking about whether you should approach them or not.

3: Leverage Your Professional Network

One of the most effective things to do to find the best mentor for the nursing apprenticeship is to leverage your professional networks. Yes, you read it right; you can use the networking events, workshops, conferences, and online networking platforms to connect with potential mentors.

Leveraging these professional networks is important as it helps you to:

• Expand your network
• Open doors for potential opportunities
• Meet with a diverse pool of experienced professionals

Also, by participating in these events, there are greater chances for you to meet with the mentors who have the same career goals as you have. Another way to leverage the professional network is to join a professional nursing association, such as the NHS. This organisation gives a great opportunity to less-experienced nursing aspirants to meet with highly experienced nurses who are willing to provide mentorship.

4: Talk with Your Clinical Internship’s Preceptor

Clinical internship is the stepping stone to a successful nursing degree. These internships aim to provide you with the hands-on experience that is required for a successful nursing career.

With this experience, these internships also introduce you to some preceptors or teachers who guide you throughout your internship program. During your course of education, you are likely to meet various preceptors, each one having a specialty and experience in different nursing aspects.

These preceptors can also be your great mentors during the nursing apprenticeship. Therefore, you have to take time to build a professional relationship with them so they understand the unique challenges that you face during your career.

Once a strong relationship has been built, you can talk to them and request them to become your mentor during the nursing apprenticeship. They could be a valuable resource to provide helpful tips and guidance to meet your nursing goals.

5: Search for a Nursing Mentor Online

As we have entered the digital world, where Internet has become a necessity. The Internet has also emerged as a popular networking tool for a wide range of industries, including nursing. You can locate a good nursing mentor with the help of the Internet.

Below are some ways through which you can find a good nursing mentor using the Internet:

• You can use the professional social networks, such as LinkedIn, to find a good mentor. At this platform, there are groups of experienced nursing mentors available who are excited to assist mentees.
• Also, you can explore the nursing-specific online platforms, like nurse.com, NurseTogether.com, etc. These platforms serve as valuable resources to find the best nursing mentors online. At these platforms, you will connect with a virtual professional who will guide you to tackle the real-world challenges of the nursing field.
• Another way to find a nursing mentor online is to download nursing apps that are specifically designed to help aspirants find a professional whose nursing goals align. These apps comprise a list of mentors’ profiles from which the students can choose.

Note: Undoubtedly, finding a good nursing mentor online can be helpful, but this form of communication is not recommended for the long term. You have to meet that online mentor in person and get effective, real-world communication that complements the online interaction.

6: Take Part in Mentorship Programs

Another great way to find a good mentor during the nursing apprenticeship is to join a mentoring program. Are you wondering where you would find this mentorship program? Don’t worry. Various healthcare facilities or nursing universities conduct their own mentorship programs, which give a chance to less experienced mentees to meet with qualified mentors.

Furthermore, these programs aim to create a positive working environment for aspiring nurses and provide a formal structure to learn from experienced nurses. The healthcare facilities or educational institutions conduct the mentorship program by following these steps:

• These programs start with providing formal mentorship training to the senior nurses.
• Then the aspiring nurses select the mentor who has the same career goals as they do.
• In the end, both parties sign a contract stating their aims and objectives for the mentoring period.

According to the study by the American Nurses, after the completion of this training program, the new nurses feel more confident. Also, this mentorship program improves the retention rates and job satisfaction rates.

A good example of this mentorship training program is the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit conducted by Boston Children’s Hospital. This university has successfully completed various mentorship programs to train junior nurses with the guidance of volunteer senior nurses.

 7: Work for Effective Communication

Communication is the key to finding the best mentor during the nursing apprenticeship. Once you have explored all the online resources and attended the mentorship programs to get assistance from a professional in your nursing career, the next step is to work on communication.

Because effective communication is the foundation of a strong mentorship relationship. For this, start with the informal chats with the potential mentor. Ask for suggestions for your career, share your objectives, and tell him your true interests before requesting him formally for the internship.

This informal communication helps you to create a less-pressure, natural, and friendly relationship with the mentor. This will also allow you to assess whether you can work with that person on a long-term basis or not. Always remember that mentorship is a deeply relational process, so make sure that you choose a person whose interests align with yours.

8: Stay Clear and Respectful

When choosing a potential mentor, you must have to explain why you are seeking this guidance and what you want to learn. With explaining your expectations, it is also important to respect the time of the mentor and stay open to the terms and conditions for this relationship.

This step is important to ensure that you are your mentor agree on the nursing goals and availability. In addition, staying transparent about your goals and needs fosters a sense of professionalism, allowing the potential nursing mentor to invest more time and energy in teaching you the fundamentals of nursing.

Now that you have learned all the valuable tips that you must follow to find a potential mentor for the. By following these tips, we hope that you will locate a great mentor as per your needs.

Apart from these tips, there are some great qualities of a good mentor that we are going to mention in the next section. By keeping these qualities in mind, you can also find a good mentor for your nursing apprenticeship.

List of the Top Qualities of a Good Nursing Mentor

A good mentor significantly contributes to building the overall careers of mentees and their personal growth during the nursing apprenticeship. Apart from providing professional assistance, an exceptional mentor possesses some traits that empower them to help nursing aspirants excel in their careers.

Check out the qualities of a good nursing mentor.

1: Passionate about helping Others

A good mentor is always passionate about helping others to achieve their goals and objectives. Great mentors not only provide professional assistance; they truly care about the mentees, so they help them to discover their best versions. Therefore, when you choose any mentor, first evaluate how much he is passionate about helping you and how much he cares about your career success.

 2: A Great Communicator

Another important trait that you must consider while choosing a nursing mentor during your apprenticeship is communication. Needless to say, a great mentor must have good communication skills so they can articulate their advice and guidance effectively.

Ben Winn, the Community manager at Catalyst, states the importance of communication for a mentor in such words, “Mentors need to be great listeners, because they should be spending 80% of their time listening, 10% of their time asking questions to probe deeper into important topics, and 10% of their time offering advice.”

3: Give Honest Feedback

It is a fact that giving criticism is hard, especially when you are giving the feedback to that person who truly inspires you. Therefore, it is one of the greatest challenges for the mentors, and only a good mentor embraces this challenge and offers constructive feedback to the mentees. To provide honest feedback, the mentor has to create a collaborative environment for nursing aspirants in which they can easily receive and accept the criticism.

4: Have the Ability to Pivot

One of the key traits for a good nursing mentor is that they use situational mentorship. Are you wondering what situational mentorship is? It means knowing when to become a coach and what is the best time to teach the mentees. A good mentor knows how to pivot between these two developmental methods.

He teaches the protégés the necessary nursing fundamentals when they need to learn something new. And when he assesses that the mentees have developed some transferable skills and can present their own insights and solutions for a certain problem, he starts coaching.

5: Eager to Share Their Knowledge and Expertise

Great nursing mentors not only offer nursing assistance but are also eager to share their experiences and knowledge with their mentees. They want their protégé to gain valuable insights from their past experience and utilise them for achieving success in their nursing career.

Additionally, a good mentor also stays grounded by having a feeling that he doesn’t have enough knowledge or is capable of becoming a mentor. Thus, a good mentor eagerly shares their knowledge and experience while remaining humble throughout the learning process.

6: Always Take Responsibility for Their Actions

A good mentor knows that leadership is all about taking full responsibility for your actions. Taking responsibility doesn’t mean that you are apologizing for something that you have dis or said, it just means owning your decisions.

The mentors who take full responsibility for their actions become role models for their protégés. They always stay open to face the consequences if things don’t work as per their plan. Further, with this attitude, they teach their mentees how to learn from their errors and move forward with the same spirit.

What Does a Nursing Mentor Do?

A nursing mentor is a person who has experience working in the nursing field. As a mentor, he provides assistance, advice, and support to individuals who want to pursue their careers in the nursing field. You can say that nursing mentors are experienced nurses who offer guidance to less experienced nurses.

A mentor can provide their services within a formal nursing program in a formal way or can work as a private mentor within an informal setting. Whatever the role, the key responsibilities of a great mentor would remain the same.

Have a look at these responsibilities:

• Answer the questions related to the clinical and nursing field.
• Help in setting career goals related to the nursing field.
• Conduct regular meetings with their protégé.
• Offer coaching and support in understanding the nursing concepts.
• Offer emotional and mental assistance to all the mentees.
• Assist mentees in finding reliable resources to excel in the nursing field.
• Give a comprehensive career insight.
• Encourages mentees to connect with other industry professionals to build a network.

Apart from the typical responsibilities of a nursing mentor, below is a list of some things that a mentor should avoid:

• Sharing information about their protégés with any third party.
• Taking full control of the career decisions of the mentees, they have control over making decisions regarding their careers.
• Providing wrong advice and support.
• Failing to pay attention to the personalised goals of mentees.
• Judging or providing negative criticism to the mentees.

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What are the 5Cs of the Mentorship?

Mentorship plays a key role in professional and personal development. There are 5 basic Cs of this mentorship program, which include the following:

• Clarity: It ensures that the mentee’s goals align with the mentor’s goals, culture, and ethics. It is also important that both mentor and mentee understand each other’s goals clearly.
• Capability: Mentorship aims to improve the skills, leadership, strategic execution, and problem-solving of the mentees.
• Context: Nursing mentorship is designed in a special context with respect of each team member.
• Coordination: The major aim of the mentorship is that the objectives of each member align with one another to achieve long-term nursing goals.
• Commitment: Commitment is another important C of the mentorship, which enables each team member to commit to mutual success.

Conclusion

In summary, mentorship is a mutual relationship between mentees and mentors, aiming to improve the skills, knowledge, and well-being of both individuals. However, finding a great mentor during a nursing apprenticeship is a hard nut to crack for protégés, as they don’t know what to consider.

Therefore, we have come up with a solution in this article. Here, we have shared some useful tips to find a good nursing mentor that every mentee must follow. These tips include identifying the goals, considering the mentor who inspires you, leveraging the professional network, talking with the clinical internship’s preceptors, joining a mentorship program, searching for a nursing mentor online, and working on better communication. By following these tips, you can find a potential mentor who can assist you in pursuing a successful nursing career.