Nurturing the future of midwifery through mentoring

Mentoring has become a popular approach for providing support in developing knowledge and practice across a variety of disciplines. Midwives often provide mentoring for midwifery mentees and newly graduated midwives without formal recognition or predetermined outcomes. Little literature exists within midwifery practice outlining how its use may be of value. This paper presents literature around the topic of mentoring, discussing possible benefits and suggesting ways in which mentoring may be utilised within midwifery to promote personal and professional development. Finally, it presents some of the limited examples of mentoring emerging from the midwifery literature.