Nursing mentors Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Nursing mentors - Essay Example Therefore, sign off-mentors must undertake preparation program to meet the requirements to determine whether students the competencies required by NMC during sign-off. The nursing and midwifery professions involve handling patients in delicate situations. Thus, it is essential to have professionals with competence and efficiency in handling patients through the required abilities and skills. During the practice, students are expected to gain competencies through the NMC programs or standards. The program ensures they deliver the required services effectively and competently in their nursing profession without the necessity of direct supervision. Nonetheless, it is the role of the sign off mentors to ensure that students ascribe to these competencies. Mentors are provided with necessary support and framework to ensure that they efficiently assess students in order to ascertain their knowledge and skills. The students often undertake NMC approved programs to ensure that they are regist ered as qualified professionals. These processes determine that only qualified and competent nurses whoa are fit for practices are introduced into the professional field. The main aim of these competence testing and practices are to ensure that the public is protected from unnecessary damage orchestrated by incompetent nurses without sufficient competencies for practice (Burton and Ormrod, 2011, p.78). The NMC has also given the mandate to sign-off mentors to ensure that students being released for professional practice are competently assessed. For competent assessment, mentors are required to be part of the inter-professional learning and working. This enables them to undertake an effective confirmation of the students’ achievement of proficiency The students on their last placement require the sign-off mentors for their accountability towards supporting and determining the pre-registration of the nursing students. It is because of this that the sign-off mentors are require d to achieve certain criteria and must demonstrate the competence. The role of the sign-off mentors is also complimented by that of the student mentors in the NMC program. This body is responsible for not only confirming but also helping the students gain a breadth of experience in the process of demonstrating competence as either midwife or a nurse. According to the NMC, there are certain progression points where a student may not undertake but only the most qualified students. Therefore, they need to assess and confirmed if students have undoubtedly achieved the expected outcomes or met the competency level of the previous program is quite vital in the practice. Effective implementation can only be achieved if the mentors keep adequate and relevant records that appropriately help as supporting documents for them to identify whether or not a student has obtained adequate competence or proficiency. The some records should help towards promoting the students to the next program. Reco rds for guidance and regular feedback must be adhered to in order to support and justify the decisions in determination of proficiency or competence (Burton and Ormrod, 2011, p.105). Signing-off mentors often assist in investigating the health of the nurses or the midwives during the pre-registration process. This ensures that the health of these health providers do not interfere with the health of patients to be served by the same people. Nonetheless, the process sometimes also includes determining the