The effect of mentoring on clinical perioperative competence in operating room nursing students

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of mentoring on the clinical perioperative competence of nursing operating room students in Iran.

Mentoring is an essential part of clinical education, which has been studied in different populations of students. However, there is a need to assess its effectiveness in operating room students' competence.

A randomised controlled trial was performed.

Sixty nursing operating room students were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Both the control and experimental groups had routine training in the form of faculty supervision. The experimental group had an additional mentoring program. Using the Persian Perceived Perioperative Competence Scale-Revised, clinical competence was compared between the two groups, before and after the intervention. Using SPSS 19, descriptive and inferential statistics, including chi-square and t-tests, were conducted.

In the experimental group, the difference between the mean scores of clinical competence before (19·43 ± 2·80) and after (27·86 ± 1·87) the intervention was significant (p ≤ 0·001). After intervention, the difference between the mean scores of the control (3·9 ± 0·15) and experimental (8·61 ± 0·68) groups was significant (p ≤ 0·003).

Findings affirmed the positive effect of mentorship programmes on clinical competence in nursing operating room students.

Mentoring is an effective method for preparing nursing students in practice. Health care systems may improve as a result of staff-student relationships that ultimately increase the quality care for patients.