Empathy in nurse mentors

One of the things that has really struck me as I carry out the initial interviews with mentors is the high level of empathy that mentors have for student nurses, patients and colleagues. The people I have interviewed so far are very experienced nurses who seem instinctively tuned in to other people and their feelings. I would like to find out more about what this means for mentors. How much of their empathy-led behavour are they conscious of labouring over, and how much is it authentic caring behaviour? Is it related to their identities as members of a caring profession? The notion of 'being-with' a student mentee is worth exploring in some depth. Sometimes, it is not about teaching or providing learning opportunities or other such actions; it is simply that they spend time together and may be inhabiting the same space at these times.

I am also interested in exploring further how mentors orient to colleagues. For instance, what are the emotional display rules amongst their colleagues with regard to mentoring? Mentors do seem to spend energy on complex interactions with colleagues, getting feedback on students, being mindful of the impact on the team of having a student, and so on.

How much of the time do mentors have to work hard at showing the 'right' emotion to students? If they are battling between heart and head when having to fail a student, how much of that do they let the student or others see? If they are relieved that a student has carried out a difficult procedure safely, does that show? I think these are all fascinating aspects of the 'hidden' lifeworld of the nurse mentor that I hope to discover.

Emotion as a social construct in the lifeworld

I've always started from the premise of studying thoughts and emotions and because they are not accesssible to a researcher by observation (although emotions can be but they can also be masked), I wanted to find out about them in dialogue with mentors. However, if I am assuming that emotion is socially constructed within the life world of a mentor, and if my focus is on the life world (as it is), then I can't really assume that emotions are internal to a person. A mentor's experience of emotion in carrying out the role will be in the context of social interactions, rationalisations and perceptions that are shaped by cultural, social and professional context. In dialogue, emotion and thoughts are mediated by language which imposes limitations on how they are and can be expressed.

I wonder how easy it is going to be for the mentors in my study to share with me how they experience their lifeworld. What other sources of data can inform my knowledge and understanding of the mentor's lifeworld? Could they capture their experience in a drawing or in some of the records they keep in the process of doing the job? Would it be feasible to ask mentors to reflect on the naturally occurring data that make up the lifeworld of mentoring and what would this add to the study?

Thoughts and feelings of mentoring

There are some psychosocial perspectives that I am interested in exploring with regard to mentoring in the context of supervising and assessing students in professional practice. These include the emotional experiences of supporting learners (who themselves have to contend with the emotions associated with learning), inducting students into the 'emotional display rules' of the workplace and the profession, managing time constraints and the rigours of 'getting assessment right' as one of the gatekeepers of the profession. I am interested in the emotional impact of all these perspectives. There is also a cognitive element, in terms of perceptions and understandings of events and the role generally. Thoughts and feelings, then, are what I'm hoping to explore.

Starting out

I'm starting out on my PhD in the UK, exploring the experiences of mentors for students in pre-registration nurse education. However, there are many potential overlaps with other professions, so I would hope that this blog may be read by mentors and students in a range of professions. There's a lot written about the role of mentors, but not so much about the "lived experience" - thoughts and feelings and perceptions of the experiences. I would love to hear from people who mentor students in their professions, to get a feel for the range of experience and some of the features of mentoring that make it different from other roles at work.