Mentor Preparation and Sign off Status

 New Mentor Preparation

The mentorship preparation course is designed to reflect the requirements of the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s Standards to support learning and assessment in practice (NMC 2008) and facilitate robust mentor preparation in line with NHS Education for Scotland’s National Approach to Mentor Preparation for Nurses and Midwives Core Curriculum Framework (NES 2013).

The NMC stipulate that mentor preparation courses should:

• Be a minimum of 10 days, of which at least five days are protected learning time
• Include learning in both academic and practice learning settings
• Include relevant work-based learning e.g. experience of mentoring a student under the supervision of a qualified mentor
• Normally be completed within three months

For NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde staff mentorship preparation courses are provided by Glasgow Caledonian University and University of the West of Scotland in partnership with the PEF/ CHEF Team. For further information please click on the links below:

Glasgow Caledonian University

University of the West of Scotland (website currently under construction)
  
 
Values Based Toolkit

This toolkit is to be used by managers and practitioners to discuss the values required for undertaking the professional gatekeeping role of mentor.

Values Based Toolkit
 

Sign off Mentor Status

Final placement student nurses, those undertaking return to practice programmes and all student midwives, require to be supervised by a sign-off mentor.

Sign-off mentors must meet additional Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) criteria for assessing proficiency, and make decisions about whether a student has achieved the required standards of proficiency for safe and effective practice for entry to the NMC register. Sign-off mentors must also be on the same part of the register and in the same field of practice as the student they are signing off.

Nursing student mentors who have undertaken mentorship preparation courses from September 2008 who wish to achieve sign-off status must meet additional criteria including mentoring a final placement student (under the supervision of an existing sign-off mentor) on three separate occasions to achieve sign-off status. Mentors should use the Evidence for achievement of sign-off mentor status document to record signing off proficiency under the supervision of an existing sign-off mentor.

A further way to achieve sign off status is the completion of the developed Workbook to evidence the achievement of sign-off mentor status and supervised sign-off mentor status. Those wishing to achieve sign-off status by this route, please contact the PEF/ CHEF team for further information.

For further information about sign-off mentor status, please contact the PEF/ CHEF team