Quality mental health clinical placements: perspectives of nursing students and their mentors

Abstract

Background: Mentoring facilitates the learning experience during the clinical placement. This learning experience is at the core of nursing education and is essential in the development of competent and capable nurses. Effective mentorship contributes to the reduction of the theory-practice gap and facilitates the transition from a student to practitioners whilst improving competence and reducing anxiety. Objectives: This study aims to develop a handbook, the Acute Mental Health Nursing Student Handbook as a guiding framework for nursing students during their acute mental health nursing placements. This study also tries to determine whether this handbook can ameliorate clinical mentoring, learning outcomes, competency development and overall experience for nursing student during the acute mental health placement. Design: This study employed a mixed method QUAN(qual) embedded design. Settings: This study was conducted at the local psychiatric hospital, recruiting both students following an undergraduate course offered by the University of Malta and mentors servicing the same institution. Participants: 35 mentors working within the Mental Health Services and 36 students enrolled undergraduate nursing courses offered by the University of Malta were recruited using purposive sampling. Methods: This study employed a three-phase approach. The first phase focused on investigating the current mentorship system and feedback from mentors to identify clinical learning objectives and ways to improve the present system. During phase 2 the Acute Mental Health Nursing student handbook was developed, which was then given to students in the experimental group following randomisation. Phase 3 involved two parts, namely 3A which focused on the evaluation of students’ perceptions and attitudes towards mental illness base on the Mental Health Education Survey (Happell, 2008b,c) (part 1 at pre-placement and part 2 at post placement) and the Attitudes to Mental Illness Questionnaire (Luty et al., 2008). Phase 3B consisted of the evaluation of the student and mentor’s comments reported in the Acute Mental Health Nursing Student Handbook. Results: 8 domains of practice were identified with specific learning outcomes pertinent to each of the domains. Results indicate that those students who were provided with the handbook experienced more favourable attitudes post-placement on the following domains: (i) preparedness to care for individuals with mental health issues; (ii) a reduced anxiety surrounding mental health and (iii) a feeling that their course prepared them adequately to the mental health field. Learning using reflective practice is very indicative however students need to be educated in how to carry out reflective practice. Conclusions: This study contributes to previous literature by highlighting the importance of clinical mentorship in the formation of student nurses. The Acute Mental Health Nursing Student Handbook addressing gaps within the local mental health clinical placements, by providing a guiding framework to both the mentor and mentee.