A mentor is “ A registrant who has met the standards for mentors and who facilitates learning, and supervises and assesses students in practice settings” (NMC, 2008,page44). Even though this is the definition used by the nursing profession it also has the same relevance to an operating department practitioner mentor. It demonstrates the importance of continuous professional development to enable myself and others to equip students with the most up to date and relevant practice. …show more content…
My student cannot be totally free in what they learn , I do agree the relationship between the mentor and student is important as it can hinder the student’s learning ; however we must mix free learning and guided teaching to enable a student to thrive . mentors have to follow guidelines on what to teach and the government have implemented many strategies over the years (DH 1999, UKCC 1999, DH 2000, ENB 2001, DH 2001) to enable the quality of teaching in practice to be of a high standard to provide both nurses and Operating Department Practitioners with the best possible support therefore improving patient care …show more content…
The DDA (1995) states that direct discrimination is when “on the grounds of the disabled persons disability, the person treats the disabled person less favourably “. Reasonable adjustments should be made in the work area to enable the student to reach their full potential. Coloured overlays should be provided for students who need assistance in reading, also allowing a student extra time to absorb information through giving instructions slowly and clearly.
The final area I will discuss concerns the failing student, as our primary accountability is to the patient it is important that if we feel a student is not competent then as a mentor I must have the confidence to fail that student. The question has to be asked why we are reluctant to fail students ? Lankshear (1990) believes that we loath to fail students as awarding a fail means additional work plus having to deal with the rancour of the student . Other reasons include difficulty in spending as much time as we need to with our students due to our own work