The College of Nursing in Celje was the coordinator of the European development and research project Quality mentoring for developing competent nursing students (QualMent), which was selected under the Erasmus+ Program, Strategic Partnerships in Higher Education. The project was implemented from 1st September 2018 till 31th August 2021.

The project partners were: European Federation of Nursing Associations (EFN), University of Oulu (Finland), University of Alicante (Spain) and University of Health Sciences (Lithuania). 

The aim of the project:

All undergraduate study programmes in the nursing field in European Union must be developed according to the EU directive (2005/36/EC amended by directive 2013/55/EU) and European Federation of Nurses Associations (EFN) Competency Framework, which demand that the half of all contacts hours of each nursing study programme are done in the clinical environments as clinical practice and mentored by the clinical mentors.

That is why the clinical practice is a key environment for developing the clinical competences. Even of the fact, that the clinical practice lead by the clinical mentors is of such great importance, structured and well planned clinical mentor’s education was still greatly lacking in nursing education. There was a lack of programs to educate clinical mentors for tackling the mentors role and the unified mentors course was of a great need as quality mentoring has significant effect upon student learning outcomes

Project outputs:

The project “Quality mentorship for developing competent nursing students” offered a systematic approach to tackle this issue with developing high quality Course of advanced mentorship competences. To assure the systematic approach, we developed Clinical mentors’ competence model which provides new knowledge and findings regarding current situation of clinical mentoring in nursing study programmes in Europe. The model introduces the most important concepts that were also integrated and used as a base to prepare Course of advanced mentorship competences as another intellectual output of the project. The third intellectual output of the project - Mentoring guidelines - offers a clear and simple instructions to be used in the daily clinical practice of mentoring. Both the Course of advanced mentoring competences and Mentoring guidelines were translated in all official EU languages. In this way, we assured that their use could be widespread across EU and broader.

The most important participants of the project were clinical mentors in clinical environment. They were included in most of the project activities mainly for the purpose of the developing the Course of advanced mentorship competences. They participated in testing of the course by attending it and then implement the gained knowledge and skills into the mentoring process. Their contribution was very important also in the evaluation of the course itself. Altogether 250 clinical mentors took part. Very important participants were also teachers, researcher and experts from partner organisation. They were a part of most of the activities that were implemented during the project while developing outputs and results eg. literature review, research findings,  analysing, developing the syllabus and curriculum of the course, ect.

Implemented methodology, activities and the project results assured systematic approach to improve current situation in clinical mentors education and has an impact on greater clinical mentors competence.  It also raised awareness about the need of high qualified nurses working as mentors in clinical environments. It also gives long term benefits  as we aim that even after the project ends the developed Course of advanced mentorship competences, materials and Mentoring guideline will stay in use at HE institutions in nursing science and clinical environments across Europe and in this way contribute that unified mentors course will be available in all EU countries.

European Federation of Nurses (EFN), as a partner of the project assured that the results of the project were spread and will be in use in all of the European countries which EFN represents (36 countries).