Confirming mentorship

Abstract

Background: Mentorship is related to nurses' success in nursing practice linked to professionalism, nursing quality improvement and self-confidence.

Aim: To elucidate mentorship of recently registered nurses' view of themselves with regard to their development of nursing competencies by means of the Sympathy-Acceptance-Understanding-Competence (SAUC) model for confirming mentorship.

Methods: Questionnaires, personal interviews and focus group interviews were used for evaluation 2 years after the completion of a year of mentorship, the subjects being eight nurses.

Findings: The study showed that novice nurses evaluated their mentors as confirming, which is understood as a key factor for novice nurses' positively reinforced self-relation (perception of themselves) and self-knowledge linked to improved competencies in nursing practice such as more secure and motivated to nurse (S-phase), increased capacity to verbalize nursing situations (A-phase) and to reflect upon and evaluate patient situations based on patients' unique identities as individuals (U-phase), and improved abilities to support patients' own resources as individuals from a more holistic view and to establish collaboration with other professionals.

Conclusion: Mentorship enabled novice nurses to nurse in a more reflective and holistic way, and their positively reinforced self-relation may be understood as a crucial ingredient for maintaining quality standards in nursing in the future.