Assessment of the practices and experiences on mentorship and mentoring of nurse educators in the school of nursing, University of Namibia
| dc.contributor.author | Tjiurutue, Ingenesia Popii Vekuminina | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2023-10-12T05:57:42Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2023-10-12T05:57:42Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2023 | |
| dc.description | Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of master in nursing science | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | Mentoring in nursing academia is receiving more attention as many senior academics are retiring and new nurse educators are joining nursing education. Mentoring is an important tool for clinical practice, nursing education, administration, and research that contributes to the competencies of many new nurse educators, who are recruited with a clinical background and little or no experience in an academic environment. It is expected for an expert nurse to become a novice in a new environment or role and needs mentoring to become an expert nurse educator. Despite the emphasis on the mentoring relationship among nursing academics, there is no established standard practice and nurse educators experience difficulty in their new role in the absence of mentoring. This study aimed to assess and describe the practices and experiences of nurse educators in the School of Nursing1 at the University of Namibia on mentorship and mentoring. The study adopted a comparative descriptive convergent parallel mixed method where quantitative and qualitative data were collected at the same time, analyzed separately, and merging occurred by comparing the two data sets and representing the merging results in a narrative discussion. The target population was nurse educators who were registered nurses by profession, teaching at the four campuses of the University of Namibia where the School of Nursing was established among the 12 campuses. The researcher opted for the same individuals in both quantitative and qualitative objectives that help to minimize threats during data collection and allowed the results to be compared. Likewise, both strands focused on the same study concepts of mentorship and mentoring to allow interpretation and comparison. For objective one, which was quantitative and focused on the practices, due to small population of nurse educators employed in the School of Nursing the total target population of 74 was included in the study as it was small and feasible for the researcher to contact everyone using a self-administered questionnaire. The target population was stratified as per campus and various teaching ranks. The mentees were nurse educators who were registered nurses by profession who had worked for less than five years at the School of Nursing while mentors should have worked for five years or more at the same school. The response rate for the quantitative strand was 82% (n= 40 questionnaires received out of 49 for the mentees and 96 % for the mentors (n=24 questionnaires received out of 25). Purposive sampling was done for objective two, which was qualitative to select the participants who participated in the semi-structured interviews at each campus as per respective study groups. For the qualitative strand, data saturation was determined per campus due to the different settings and heterogenous teaching ranks that had different experiences. A total of 36 mentees and 16 mentors participated across the different campuses. The interpretation of data sets shows convergent and discordant results in the quantitative data between the mentees and mentors in mentorship and mentoring practices. Likewise, similar four main themes emerged from both groups, with some variants of unique sub-themes across the groups. The quantitative results show that mentees and mentors agreed on mentorship practices but had discordant results on mentoring aspects as mentees disagreed with mentors’ positive ratings. Variables with significant p-values were identified and compared first within each group of mentees and mentors first and then finally with the finding from the qualitative data set. Equally, the qualitative results also had convergent and discordant results between mentees and mentors as well within each group supported by various sub-themes. The common approach of primary data analysis integration procedure was used. The representation of merging integration results was done by a side-by-side comparison of significant p- values of quantitative and main themes and sub-themes of the qualitative results through a narrative discussion. The discussion narrated how qualitative themes and sub-themes either confirm, disconfirm, or complemented the quantitative results or vice versa. This study concluded that mentoring and mentorship practices were described differently by mentors and mentees as well that positive and negative experiences emerged in both groups. Recommendations included the facilitation of good relationships as well as establishing trust, respect, and healthy communication between mentors and mentees. It was also recommended for the School of Nursing to have a school-specific orientation for nurse educators and develop a formal mentoring programme. Finally, there was a need to revisit the workload of nurse educators and develop a guideline for virtual mentoring of mentees | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/11070/3726 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
| dc.publisher | University of Namibia | en_US |
| dc.subject | Nurse educators | en_US |
| dc.subject | Practices and experiences | en_US |
| dc.subject | Mentorship and mentoring | en_US |
| dc.subject | Mentoring in nursing academia | en_US |
| dc.subject | Nursing education | en_US |
| dc.title | Assessment of the practices and experiences on mentorship and mentoring of nurse educators in the school of nursing, University of Namibia | en_US |
| dc.type | Thesis | en_US |