UNIVERSITY NEWS LAST UPDATED : 14 SEPTEMBER 2016
New research has revealed that nursing placement mentors are being manipulated and some even subjected to threatening behaviour by nursing students, over responses to feedback about their performance.
The study published today (Wednesday 14 September) has been led by Dr Louise Hunt, Senior Lecturer in Adult Nursing at Birmingham City University. It examines the experiences of nursing mentors from across England, and the responses mentors received from students when informed that they had not met the criteria required to pass their placement assessment.
Nursing students must attend practical placements throughout the duration of their course. Students are allocated a mentor who provides feedback to Universities on the students’ performance, and must assess that students are fit for practice, and have the skills and knowledge in order to become a registered nurse.
The study revealed how some students resorted to using coercive strategies to try and influence their mentor’s decision, with some even going as far as threatening mentors in an attempt to pressurise them into passing them: “We had a student’s boyfriend come and threaten the mentor because they’d said they were going to fail them."
Another research participant spoke about the use of emotional tactics: “The student will either try to be tearful, you know start crying or why, why, why have you got to fail me? And sometimes the student will pile on the pressure.”
The study, published today (Wednesday 14 September) in Nurse Education in Practice, identified four types of coercive student behaviour, whereby students would use various methods to try and put pressure and influence the mentor on their decision:
- Ingratiators – Students who bring themselves into favour by charming, obliging, indulging or emotionally exploiting the mentor.
- Diverters – Students who distract and redirect focus onto factors unconnected to the area of concern.
- Disparagers – Students who counter-challenge mentors in ways perceived as belittling, derogatory or professionally harmful.
- Aggressors – Students who initiate open hostility, making personal threats directly or via a third party, and on occasion carry these out.
Dr Louise Hunt, Senior Lecturer in Adult Nursing at Birmingham City University said:
However Louise recognises that there are techniques which can be put in place in order to assist mentors in recognising and managing coercive students.
“Universities need to manage students’ expectations of mentors; they need to be viewed by students as having equal status with academic assessors.
“In addition, those who support mentors in practice should help them to recognise the locus of the fail – helping the mentor to appreciate it is the student’s performance not theirs which is below the required standard.
“We also need to educate mentors to recognise these coercive strategies. The impact of these strategies is greatly reduced as soon as the mentor is able to recognise them.”