Mentorship’s Critical Role in Advanced Healthcare Education
Mentorship—sometimes called “the buddy system,” has been consistently shown to be one of the most effective ways to introduce a person to a new set of responsibilities. Big businesses implement mandatory mentorship programs as part of their onboarding strategy—to great effect.
Even hospitals will take this approach, pairing new nurses with those established in their roles as a way of providing a good support system. However, incoming doctors and nurses shouldn’t need to wait until they are already working to receive individualized guidance.
The American healthcare system has an astoundingly high turnover rate. Mentorship programs that begin while doctors and nurses are still and school could help reduce that turnover by providing students with a resource they can bounce questions off and gain important insights from.
In this article, we take a look at the benefits of mentorship in advanced healthcare education.
What is the Best Way to Leverage Mentorship?
That’s the first question that comes to most people’s minds when they consider the concept of mentorship. Sure, it sounds like a good idea on paper, but what are the practical realities of it? Is it compulsory, or optional? If it is optional, will people really participate?
And let’s talk mentors. Where do we find them? How do we entice them to join? Is this a paid position, or are they doing this out of the goodness of their heart?
In the context of education, mentorship programs are typically optional, though there are obvious benefits to making them mandatory. It’s hard to convince a busy person to opt for more responsibilities.
As for enticing potential mentors, the criteria may depend on your access to willing participants. In the employment sector, mentorship generally involves connecting a new hire with more established personnel. In this case, it may involve putting a new student with one who has been in the program for a few years.
Participants may be rewarded with a small stipend, or a minor break in tuition that reflects the compensation structure typical to other student on-campus working opportunities. How extensive the program requirements are may depend on the specifics of the curriculum and the overall expectations of the initiative.
Are you intending to leverage it as a support system for struggling students? If so, you may find it appropriate to make the program fairly involved.
Is it a compulsory requirement for incoming students? If so, the requirements may be a little more lax.
Benefits of Mentorship Programs for Healthcare Students
If you aren’t quite sold on the idea yet, that is understandable. It will involve a bit of an undertaking on your part. Below, we take a look at several of the many benefits that mentorship programs can provide advanced healthcare students.
It May Be More Enticing for Prospective Students
Incoming students— particularly at the advanced level— want to make sure that they are entering high-quality programs. They will verify this through their independent research. They may even check in to find out what current students say or do a little digging around to make sure that you have your CCNE accreditation.
It would be more than a step too far to say that anyone is going to choose a school program just because it has a mentorship program. However, it may be a feather in your cap. Committed students look for programs they can thrive in. Mentorship programs contribute toward that end.
Mentorship Programs Help Avoid Burnout
Healthcare burnout is very real— even at the academic level. The work is hard and never-ceasing. The concepts are both intellectually and emotionally difficult. Not only is the student learning things well outside their basic experiences but they are also coming into close contact with potentially traumatizing medical experiences.
They learn about and then see firsthand the devasting effects of chronic illness or even the inevitable deterioration caused by age. It is a challenging experience, for which having someone dedicated to listening to your concerns can help a lot.
Naturally, having a mentor will not make the difficult realities of healthcare-related employment go away. It may make them more manageable. Many studies have shown that nurses who have coworkers they trust and can talk to are more likely to stay on the job than those who do not.
Networking Potential
Student-to-student mentoring may have only limited networking potential. There are still opportunities. Someone in the third year of a graduate program will enter the workforce well before their first-year mentee, and may potentially serve as a resource for them a few years down the line when they are ready to seek employment.
When mentors come from the wider healthcare community—visiting doctors and nurses, for example, the opportunities are even more straightforward. In healthcare, as with any employment sector, it helps to have personal connections.
Establishing those connections while still in school is an asset for students who want to maximize their chances of finding desirable or competitive positions.
Mentorship Breeds Better Healthcare Workers
Finally, mentorship programs also just genuinely benefit incoming healthcare workers. These programs provide an additional opportunity for new doctors and nurses to receive insights and information that may make their work a little easier or more understandable.
Everyone’s had an experience where a complicated learning concept was simplified by someone who managed to come up with a different way to explain it.
Mentors can play that part, leveraging their personal experience as a way of explaining concepts and helping new students acclimate to their roles.
Programs that May Be Good for Mentorship Opportunities
Any healthcare curriculum could benefit from connecting new students with more established ones. The more difficult the program, the more important those mentorship opportunities become. Nurse practitioners may benefit from mentorship arrangements a little more than people who are working on becoming RNs.
Ultimately, you can decide how to leverage mentorship opportunities by considering your resources, prioritizing your goals, and identifying the most natural points of overlap. For example, if your goal is to maximize the rate of people who successfully complete the program, and you don’t have access to a large pool of potential mentors, you may focus on helping at-risk students.
On the other hand, if you have access to many potential mentors, you might open the program up to the wider public.
This article has been published in accordance with Socialnomics’ disclosure policy.
