Mentors’ competence in mentoring nursing students in clinical practice : detecting profiles to enhance mentoring practices

Abstract

<div lang="en" class="abs"><p class="abs_header">Abstract</p><p><em>Aims:</em> To describe the mentoring competence of clinical practice nurse mentors and identify different mentor profiles.</p><p><em>Design:</em> Cross-sectional research design, secondary analysis.</p><p><em>Methods:</em> An international, cross-sectional study design was performed in five European countries. A total of 1 604 mentors from 33 healthcare organizations participated in the study between 2016–2019. The Mentors’ Competence Instrument (MCI), which includes seven sub-dimensions and 44 items, was used to collect data. K-means cluster and binary regression analyses were performed to detect mentor profiles and determine how various factors affect competence, respectively.</p><p><em>Results:</em> The K-means cluster analysis identified three distinct profiles: A (<em>n</em> = 926); B (<em>n</em> = 566); and C (n = 85). The profiles showed significantly different values (p < 0.001) across all seven areas of mentoring competence. In comparison with the other profiles, nurses in profile A were older, had more work experience and were more probably to have completed mentoring-specific training.</p></div>