NURSE MENTOR'S SKILLS, ATTITUDES AND USE OF TOOLS

 NURSE MENTOR'S SKILLS, ATTITUDES AND USE OF TOOLS


Introduction

Nurse mentoring utilizes QI principles to assess, diagnose, manage, and measure service provision in the Block and to constantly advocate for quality at all levels.


The nurse mentor must have a wide range of skills, attitudes and approaches to tackling a wide range of issues. Nurse mentors must be able to work at several different levels and use different skills depending on the task at hand.

This chapter details the various skills and attitudes that nurse mentors should possess, as well as certain tools and resources that mentors need to be able to effectively implement quality improvement at all levels within the Block.


At the block level, nurse mentors must be able to work with senior block-level personnel to assess the provision of services in the block. In almost all cases, there is a shortage of delivery points (DPS), a shortage of essential services (such as family planning, abortion care, adolescent care, and nutrition), a shortage of trained staff and a shortage of equipment and drugs.


The block PIP has been developed to assist in planning for services improvement and addressing these shortages. A large part of the NM job is to assist block-level personnel to verify these identified problems, identify new issues for attention, diagnose why these problems exist, help find solutions and continually monitor progress.

Advocating for funds, staff or equipment that will improve the quality of services in the block is an extremely important task. The skills needed for these tasks include good organizational skills, good communication skills, a solid understanding of the needs of the population and the services to which they are entitled and the ability to work with the block health management team to make things happen.


At the community level, NMs must work with those who manage front-line workers to ensure that women and children in the community have continuity of care.


This might mean, for example, helping to identify if women are being appropriately referred to health facilities for tests or for services, to diagnose where are the bottlenecks, to suggest ways to manage these problems and to monitor and measure whether changes are happening.

The skills needed for these tasks include good organizational skills, good communication skills, a solid understanding of how the continuum of care should function and the ability to work within the community health care team to make changes.


Within the health facilities, mentors must be able to assist health workers to improve the health systems (such as referral systems, supply systems, and infection control systems), which are essential for workers to be able to perform their jobs.


Mentors need to be to explain and promote Ql and client and provider rights, facilitate team building and team self-assessment and encourage non-punitive reflection of services. In this way they can help staff at the facilities to identify problems, such as shortage of drugs, help them come up with reasons for these problems and identify short and long-term solutions.


As a member of a block-level team, the mentor is well-placed to assist with problems that need higher-level approaches. When performing these tasks, mentors need to always advocate with staff for continued quality improvement.

The skills need for these tasks are an ability to see service gaps themselves, an ability to help others see these issues for themselves, the skill at facilitating group meetings where these issues are discussed, and a thorough knowledge of self-assessment tools, client's rights and provider needs, and a focus on teamwork.


At the individual provider level, mentors must provide practical clinical training to providers using a variety of methods. The nurse mentors need to mentor staff in groups, through participatory learning methods, provide demonstrations and mentor staff one on one, on the job, in a very practical way.


Nurse mentors need to be experienced, practicing clinicians/nurses in their own right, with strong teaching skills. Mentoring should be seen as part of the continuum of education required to create competent healthcare providers.

To manage this aspect of the job, mentors need to adopt often different skills to traditional supervisory staff. They must have good interpersonal communication skills, an ability to be non-judgemental and to help staff to practice quality service provision.


A full knowledge of all government and UPTSU protocols, standards and tools, such as patient case sheets is essential.


To undertake the job of a nurse mentor, certain knowledge, skills, tools and resources are needed, as explained in the following table (Table 3).






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mentoring Activities to Improve Nursing Service Quality

Image
MENTORING ACTIVITIES TO IMPROVE SERVICES QUALITY OF NURSING A substantial amount of the mentors' time will be spent at the main CHC facility in the block. The main purpose of being in health facilities is to ensure the quality of services that encompasses both system-level issues and individual provider-level issues. At healthcare facilities, mentors should use the PDCA approach at two levels First at the health facility level mentors will help staff to improve service delivery by helping the health facility team to solve problems related to facility systems that hamper day to day functioning of the facility.  The mentor will encourage providers to understand that when they work together their collective strength helps to resolve certain problems. Second, at an individual provider level, the mentor's focus should be to improve clinical competencies.  This chapter describes how the mentors can use the PDCA approach and specific tools at the first of these levels - service quali...
Read more

What Is Infection Prevention

Image
INFECTION PREVENTION This chapter explains the importance of infection control at facilities, different components of infection control specific to facilities and how a mentor can actually apply the PDCA approach to set up or strengthen the infection prevention practices in a facility. Introduction and need for infection prevention practices Any person in the facility including its providers and clients along with their family members can be a source of infection. All objects that come in contact with any of them in the facility should be considered to be potentially infected and capable of transmission of infection. The most neglected service in a health care setting in India has poor infection control that lead to transmission of infections in the facility and community. The objectives of infection prevention practices are: To provide services to clients with high quality and safety To prevent post-procedure infections in clients To prevent infections in service providers To prevent...
Read more

What Is Infection Prevention

Image
  INFECTION PREVENTION This chapter explains the importance of infection control at facilities, different components of infection control specific to facilities and how a mentor can actually apply the  PDCA  approach to set up or strengthen the infection prevention practices in a facility. Introduction and need for infection prevention practices Any person in the facility including its providers and clients along with their family members can be a source of infection. All objects that come in contact with any of them in the facility should be considered to be potentially infected and capable of transmission of infection. The most neglected service in a health care setting in India has poor infection control that lead to transmission of infections in the facility and community. The objectives of infection prevention practices are: To provide services to clients with high quality and safety To prevent post-procedure infections in clients To prevent infections in service pro...
Read more