Support for you

Personnel

The Open University provides a range of support for mentors. The means by which support is provided to you is through your relationship with the Practice Tutor, which will be provided through e.mail contact by telephone and face to face meetings. The Practice Tutor is your first point of contact if you have any concerns or queries about supporting your student in practice. If your student raises concerns about their academic work you should instruct your student to contact their relevant module tutor. In addition the offices of the OU located in the regions and nations of the UK also provide support to you through the role of the Staff Tutor or Regional Education Manager, faculty co-ordinators and administrators. Within your organisation the named employer is your first point of contact if you have any employment based concerns about the student you are supporting. You may also have colleagues who can support you in your mentoring role.

The Nursing Partners website (only available to OU mentors)

 You may well have already completed the Activity: What’s on the Nursing Partners website, when you studied the section on the Pre-Registration Nursing Programme. If you skipped this activity as you worked through the induction, you might like to do it now. Or, you might have completed the activity but see this as a good opportunity to refresh your skills in finding information on the website, in which case do return to the website now for a further exploration.

The website contains links to a wealth of information about nursing in general, and more specifically to the OU’s pre-registration nursing programmes, so do use it to guide your role as a mentor and also to support your own professional and personal development as a registered nurse. The website is available to you 24/7, throughout the time that you are mentoring an OU student nurse, so use it as frequently as you like. It is there for you.

The OU Mentor Induction: an easy reference tool

Now that you have almost completed the induction, we hope that you will also recognise the induction itself as a ready source of information and support. Using the initial contents list, it is quick and easy to navigate straight to your chosen information. Like the Nursing Partners website, the induction is also available 24/7. So, at any time, you can choose to:

• return to parts of the induction that you decided to skip first time round
• repeat a part that now makes better sense in light of your enhanced knowledge about the programme
• review an activity in order to test your own knowledge about the programme
• reiterate sections of the programme as part of your own mentor updating process
• complete the iCMA.

Future support and development

This mentor induction is just the start of your development as a mentor to Open University pre-registration nursing students. If you get the opportunity, do try to attend a face to face mentor induction or update session, as this will enable you to meet other mentors supporting Open University students.

Now that you have completed this part of the induction check what you feel able to do against the outcomes.

Next section: So finally