Mentorship provision for student nurses: Conceptions of Finnish and British mentors in healthcare placements

Background: The unification process for clinical education in Europe seeks to standardise the attainment of competencies by students and effective mentorship is central to this. Aim: This paper is a report on a study describing Finnish and British mentors’ conceptions of mentorship provision for pre-registration nursing students during placement learning in healthcare settings. Methods: This qualitative study adopted a phenomenographical approach, which focused on the different ways mentorship provision for student nurses were experienced. Conceptions data from Finnish (n=22) and British (n=17) mentors were collected from nine focus group interviews between 2007 and 2008. Findings: The mentors’ conceptions consisted of dimensions of organisational, environmental, educational and personal provisions, which connected to three categories of description: workable, insufficient and improvement-requiring mentorship. The workable student mentorship included efficient organisations, well-equipped learning environments, co-operative partnerships and the mentors’ personal and professional competence. The insufficient student mentorship was characterised by deficient managerial investments, overloaded placements with stressed staff, unsatisfying co-operation with stakeholders and lack of resources and personal skills of mentors. The improvement-requiring mentorship emphasized higher status and clearer guidelines for mentorship, appropriate placement allocation with joint involvement of stakeholders, better level of student preparedness, and more educational and personal resources for