Mentoring schemes

For those responsible for recruitment and retention of staff, quality assurance of services and management the successful management of change at all levels is vital.

The introduction of one to one mentoring in industry has been shown to improve both productivity and retention of employees, by creating a culture of development, which values the individual.

The advent of the appraisal process will have identified a great need amongst doctors to have ongoing professional support.

A successfully run mentoring scheme will support doctors and other healthcare professionals in their efforts to maintain high standards in a changing medical environment.

It helps to address the issues of continuing education, personal development planning, and communication with both medical and non-medical colleagues.

The organisation will benefit greatly by an increased openness. It will have well-motivated and balanced people with improved teamwork, better change management and leadership.

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Setting up a mentor scheme

Both primary and secondary care healthcare professionals could establish mentoring within their organisation. Primary care trusts, hospital and community trusts could consider setting up their own schemes. But anyone who is responsible for ensuring workforce development could consider a mentoring scheme.

Cygnus Mentoring could help you to establish your mentoring project. It takes about 6 months to set up and recognises several stages.

• Agreeing a mentoring philosophy within the organisation
• Identifying funding
• Initial meeting with the key contacts
• Launch meeting of potential people interested
• Identifying mentors and mentees
• Establishing a matching process
• Training mentors for their new role
• Informing mentees about the process
• Supporting the mentors with learning sets and support groups
• Monitoring and evaluation of the project

Monitoring and evaluation of the scheme

To ensure good quality mentoring, the scheme needs to be evaluated regularly.

This can be done with confidential feedback to the organisers of the scheme from the mentees themselves and with appraisal sessions with the mentors.

Any difficulties in the process can be observed and remedied. The exact nature of the monitoring will be discussed between the various participating parties

Cygnus specialises in providing bespoke mentoring schemes, which match the needs of your organisation.

We welcome any suggestions and will work in partnership to achieve your aims and objectives.

Training the mentors

Potential mentors will be identified by the organisation.

They will usually be selected for some of the qualities listed below

• Being a respected individual in their own field
• Ability to listen and empathise
• Interest in education and development
• Self-reflection and commitment to lifelong learning
• Self-awareness
• Flexibility
• Good communication skills
• Skills to facilitate change in others
• Understanding of the healthcare system
• Ability to work within an ethical framework

After selection they will receive further training to build upon those qualities and to support them in their new roles.

Interested?

If you would like further information about our training courses or would like to discuss your needs with us we would be very happy to hear from you.

Please contact us

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