There are many faces to nursing. The nursing role includes various responsibilities, including more than nursing patients, all having the same objectives with the aim to producing whatever might improve the development of nursing, which will eventually be of benefit to patients.
Patients do not realize that nurses need to prepare and guide students to help them become competent nurses. Student nurses have to go through a three year program to become a nurse, but the academic side of learning is not enough to become a good nurse. A nurse must practice to master all the skills required to be able to care for patients in a professional manner. The educational nursing process has continued to evolve and new challenges are being raised. One of the great challenges in development is the process of mentorship and supervision of nursing students, where the main goal is to guide students through their clinical placement, to make sure that they become the most competent practitioners.
This process is called ‘mentoring’. A mentor is a practitioner who facilitates learning by supervising and assessing the nursing students in their clinical practice area.(English National Board For Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting & Department of Health (2001) Preparation for Teachers and Mentors: A New Framework of Guidance. ENB/DH, London.). Mentors helps to bridge the gap between the theory and practice, and so nursing students develop an understanding about their profession. There are clinical tutors available from nursing universities who can guide students in clinical practice, but mentoring by the nurse working in the ward of practice has the most advantage since the latest techniques, tools and protocols are familiar and used continuously. Jarvis (1992) argued that teachers of nursing cannot be up to date with practice if they are not practicing. A mentor who is non active cannot give expertise guidance to real life scenarios.