HISTORICAL MILESTONES IN THE FORMATION OF MENTORING IN NURSING

Full Text

The conditions of modern reality dictate the need for highly professional, knowledgeable specialists of a secondary medical profile. The practical activity of young specialists after graduation from a medical school is associated with the peculiarities of the profession itself, so there are difficulties in actively adapting to gradually changing circumstances. Often graduates have to study the latest techniques, as well as acquire new skills.
The main concept of mentoring is focused on ensuring that in the shortest possible time a young specialist gets involved in the current course of events of his work, orients himself in the latest situation, acquires the necessary positive skill for the purpose of high-quality performance of his own professional duties. During the beginning of work, the help of the working team is very important for a young professional, since joining it is associated with psychological stress. A new team for a nurse is an environment of strangers with their inherent habits, inclinations and emotions, acting on unfamiliar patterns of behavior. A new nurse is faced with a new culture for herself, with unfamiliar rules and conventions. A nurse inevitably has difficulties in mastering a new specialty or a new workplace. In these circumstances, the help of a mentor is needed. The mentor should teach professional skills and help in mastering knowledge and skills based on a personal example [1].
Mentoring is aimed at the effective adaptation of graduates, increasing their qualifications, developing skills and abilities in the professional field. A young nurse should be assisted by the most qualified specialists. Turning to the historical aspect, the founder in the formation of the institute of mentoring, according to modern research, belongs to Florence Nightingale, a nurse who singled out nursing as an independent discipline (1820-1910). As a result of her thoughts and fruitful work, there have been changes in people's minds about the profession of a nurse and her role in improving public health. F. Nightingale in her practice applied a scientific approach to solving professional problems. She was the first in the history of nursing to use scientific methods in solving the difficulties of nursing. It was she who was sure that "essentially nursing as a profession differs from medical activity and requires special, different from medical knowledge" [1]. It was she who, in 1860, organized the world's first school of sisters of mercy at a hospital in London and successfully embodied her own mentoring thoughts. This was the beginning of mentoring in nursing. Graduates of the school for whom F. Nightingale became a teacher and mentor, managed to implement the knowledge and skills acquired from their own mentor and became mentors themselves, creating their own schools at hospitals. With the help of his own successful mentoring experience, F. Nightingale managed to direct the attention of the population to the prestige of working as a nurse.
Her book "Notes on Patient Care" was rightfully appreciated by physicians of that period and even doctors in their professional activities used it as a manual on medicine. Florence Nightingale showed for the first time the impact of environmental conditions on human health by introducing the basic principles of active prevention. She always said that "it is necessary to monitor the healthy so that they do not become sick" [1].
In Soviet times, mentoring was "a significant contribution to the flawlessly directed training of young employees, a methodology for the formation of ideological and political, as well as highly moral qualities of pupils" [2]. The government encouraged mentoring, these were material incentives (payments, an increase to a pension.) and non-material (an award with the venerable symbol "Mentor of Youth", the assignment of the title "Honored Mentor of Youth of the RSFSR"). All this stimulated the development of mentoring in the country [3].
Currently, the project "Mentoring in the medical environment" is being implemented, which is coordinated by the Association of Honored Doctors of Russia. The need to create this project is caused by the need to revive the institute of mentoring in the medical field. Within the framework of the project, a Standard provision "On mentoring in state medical organizations" was adopted. In this document, the main tasks for supporting mentoring and transferring professional experience are approved at the legislative level.
The activation and development of the mentoring institute is possible through the creation of a medical volunteering movement. Currently, there is a volunteer movement "Medical Volunteers", which was organized with the support of the Ministry of Health of Russia in 2013, and since 2016 has the official status of an All-Russian public organization and today acts as one of the largest voluntary health organizations.
Studying within the walls of our University, students of the Institute of Nursing Education take part in various areas of the work of the Milky Way Volunteering Center, where, together with mentors, they receive professionally-oriented and psychological support. Thanks to the volunteer movement, the ideas of mentoring are being popularized at the University. It provides students with the opportunity to master the skills of their future profession through voluntary activity, creates conditions for the development of primary professional experience through the acquisition of professional competencies. Mentoring is of no small importance in the organization of educational and industrial practice for students of the Institute of Nursing Education.
Thus, mentoring is a priority task on a national scale, the solution of which is able to bring the issues of personnel policy in the field of healthcare, the quality of medical services to the population to a new, more advanced level.

About the authors

Zhanna Sergeevna Potapova

Voronezh State Medical University N.N. Burdenko

Email: natkuz48@mail.ru

3rd year student of the Institute of Nursing Education

Russian Federation, 394036, Russia, Voronezh, st. Student, 10

Anna Vasilyevna Kryuchkova

Voronezh State Medical University N.N. Burdenko

Email: ann1059@yandex.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0003-3946-6943

Associate Professor, Director of the Institute of Nursing Education

Russian Federation, 394036, Russia, Voronezh, st. Student, 10

Natalia Mikhailovna Semynina

Voronezh State Medical University N.N. Burdenko

Email: natala-sem@mail.ru

Associate Professor of the Department of Organization of Nursing

Russian Federation, 394036, Russia, Voronezh, st. Student, 10

Olga Alekseevna Panina

Voronezh State Medical University N.N. Burdenko

Author for correspondence.
Email: media01@mail.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-7351-3638

Assistant of the Department of Organization of Nursing, Candidate of Medical Sciences

Russian Federation, 394036, Russia, Voronezh, st. Student, 10

References