Exploring Mentoring Skills to Assist New Nurses: Mentors’ and Mentees’ Perspectives

Abstract

Studies on Western context have reported on the mentor skills needed such as the role of interpersonal comfort in mentoring relationships as well as the role of age in mentoring relationships. There are limited studies in exploring the effectiveness on the most relevant skills needed by mentors in assisting the new nurses toward becoming an effective healthcare provider in the Malaysian public hospital context. The mentors’ roles can be summarized into the general and specific role on the basis of the goal and the purpose of the mentoring. Mentor roles can be very broad and almost include everything under the sky of learning contract, therefore, the need to be more specific and clear direction in order to have clear understanding between the mentor, mentee and the organization. Data were collected from four pairs of mentors and mentees (eight informants) working in a public hospital in Sarawak, Malaysia, using openended questionnaires and analysed using content analysis. Findings revealed that the required skills of the mentors to better assist new nurses at the workplace can be captured through the acronym S.K.I.L.L.S. Hence, the nurses’ -management training and development programme related to S.K.I.L.L. acronym is relevant to be conducted among the new nurses. This strategy suggested because too many and unspecified roles may bring negative experiences for both mentor and mentee which may result in dysfunctional mentoring. Introduction Nurses forms the largest occupational group within the healthcare sector globally (World Health Organization, 2017). In comparison, the number of hired nurses in the United Kingdom is 2.1 times more than the amount of hired doctors (NHS Confederation, 2016). In Malaysia nurses alone—59,005 of them registered—form the largest part of the workforce within the healthcare sector (ministry of health, Malaysia, 2008). It is of great importance for countries to maintain the immense number of nurses due to the nature of the role nurses play and the need to meet the healthcare demands and social expectation (Kanchanachitra et al., 2011). Thus countries have been taking initiatives to address the shortages of nurses through the rapid establishment of nursing schools this includes Malaysia (Cruez, 2006). International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences Vol. 1 1 , No. 14, Contemporary Business and Humanities Landscape Towards Sustainability. 2021, E-ISSN: 2222-6990 © 2021 HRMARS 126 However, the focus on increasing nurses through the establishment of nursing institution have created concerns over the deterioration in entry standards due to the emergence of competition among various institution to attract students to join them (Barnett et al., 2010). The consequence of lowering entry standards concerns the divergence of actual result from the desired result in terms of the student’s performance. The concern derived from the consequence further poses as a challenge for educators and healthcare professional to support and enable students to complete their course within a minimum time and capable of becoming proficient nurses or at least able to uphold standards to an acceptable degree. Nevertheless, the nursing standards and professionalism in Malaysia is being perceived to be in the state of declining with nurses being less proficient in terms of skill, care offered, and effectiveness (Merican, 2006). Moreover, the multidisciplinary healthcare delivery landscape of many hospital has been altered due to the numerous amount of fresh graduates joining the workforce with areas like patient care being occupied by young nurses with minimal experience (Barnett et al., 2010; Nikolaidou et al., 2014). Seemingly being aware of the pervading issue among nurses in Malaysia, the Ministry of Health acted through the introduction of a one-year supervision mentorship programme for fresh graduate out of nursing school. The programme produced promising result showing nurses demonstrating traits such as confidence, accountability and care while attending their patients (Barnett et al., 2010). There are limited studies in exploring the effectiveness of the most relevant skills needed by mentors in assisting new nurses toward becoming an effective healthcare provider in the Malaysian public hospital context. On the contrary, studies on Western context have reported on the mentoring skills needed such as the role of interpersonal comfort and the role of age in mentoring relationships (Allen et al., 2005; Beecroft et al., 2006; Finkelstein et al., 2003). Although the nursing profession of Malaysia started around the 1950s to 1960s, nurses of the country are still trying to catch up with the professional standards of nurses in the western world (Buncuan & Zabidah, 2010). The motivation for nurses in Malaysia to strive to meet the professional standards of their western counterparts derived from being mindful of the importance of elevating the nursing status to an equivalent status of those of other professions within the Malaysian healthcare context. Other factors include current the introduction of new healthcare technologies, changes in healthcare trends, change in social expectation, the escalation of the women’s right and consumers’ right movement (Buncuan & Zabidah, 2010). Even though the quality of professionalism among nurses was being regulated as a requirement in Malaysia for many years, to reach the status of being known as a professional still requires a lot of effort (Birks et al, 2008). According to the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia (2010), before nurses in Malaysia to attain and being declared as professional status, five conditions need to be fulfilled. First, continuous education needs to be offered for nurses. Second, to be classified a profession, the importance of having a well-developed theory emphasizing on defining the role of the profession, and the skill, abilities and norms expected from the profession. Third, regardless of any profession, the area or type of service provided ought to be specific. Forth, the freedom to exercise role-related decisions and various practices. Fifth, the importance to uphold the code of ethics required by the profession. Thus, in order to elevate the nursing profession to professional status, The Nursing Division and Ministry of Health Malaysia have taken the effort to introduce a five-component framework of nursing professionalism (Abdul Wahab, 2011). The five component includes meeting both the present and future needs of the patients, governance decency and fair economical treatment as a source of support, patient’s safety as a top priority, reduction of negative impact upon the people and environment and the development of skills International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences Vol. 1 1 , No. 14, Contemporary Business and Humanities Landscape Towards Sustainability. 2021, E-ISSN: 2222-6990 © 2021 HRMARS 127 and competency of nurses. Additionally, they are four main strategies in order to support the aspiration for nurses to achieve success in attaining the status of professionalism, such strategies are emphasized on entry qualification into nursing schools, mentorship program, ligature of Continuous Program Development and Annual Practice Certificate and strengthen specialization within the profession itself. Generation X and Y nurses in Malaysia Many nurses and nursing scholars were from ‘generation X’. According to Sherman (2006), ‘generation X’ refers to people born between 1961 and 1980, who are eager for recognition of their talents, creativity and expertise. Keepnews et al. (2010) supports this argument by stating that the generation X nurses generally want to have professional, knowledgeable and experienced mentors besides expecting prompt feedback regarding their performances. The new nurses comprising largely of Generation Y are entering the nursing workforce, joining four different generational cohorts within a multidiscipline healthcare system. Their needs and expectations differ slightly if compared to earlier generations, especially with the presence of male gender in nursing. Since 2007, the nursing profession in Malaysia has adopted nurse-to-nurse mentoring as a strategy to assist the transition of individuals to become new nurses (Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia, 2010). The mentorship program was designed which newly graduated nurses are coached, guided to better adapt and cope in the challenging and complex professional roles and responsibilities in the workplace. Mentorship is when two individuals—one bearing the role of a mentor and one bearing the role of a mentee— established a supportive relationship between each other and involving the transference of knowledge, skills and abilities (KSA) take place (Kram, 1985). According to Robinson (2001), the act of mentoring is being perceived as the most successful way to arouse the sense of loyalty among new employees and the most effective way for the transference of KSA to take place. In general, the role of a mentor involves guiding an individual in terms of helping them to develop and grow, to become competent, setting them towards the most optimum direction, and being there as a source of support and motivation (Norhasni & Aminuddin, 2011). Thus, it is of utmost importance for mentors to meet the criteria and requirement needed to meet the expectation of the role of a mentor. Despite being known as the largest workforce in the healthcare sector in Malaysia, there is still an issue of nurses shortages (Barnett et al., 2010). In comparison between Malaysia and other upper middleincome countries, the former only have 2.78 nurses and midwives per 1000 population which is less as compared to the latter having 4.4 nurses and midwives per 1000 population (World Health Organization, 2012). The issue of having a shortage of nurses in Malaysia lead to the issue of ward closure and the inability for the country to meet the standards