Compassion Focused Approaches to Nurse Mentoring

This thesis explored the delivery of Compassion Focused Approaches (CFA) and Mindfulness Based Interventions (MBIs) to support the training of healthcare professionals. Preliminary information from existing narrative reviews regarding the implementation of MBIs for Trainee Psychological Therapists (TPTs) have demonstrated potential benefits for TPTs. The systematic review aimed to identify specific areas of improvement for TPTs following their participation in MBIs. Nineteen studies of medium to high quality met the inclusion criteria. The review highlighted that MBIs have a positive impact on some areas of TPTs’ psychological wellbeing, specifically on anxiety. Further, TPTs’ therapeutic skills such as empathy, self-compassion, mindfulness skills and TPTs’ perceived ‘therapist self-efficacy’ improved. Factors influencing fidelity in the delivery of the MBI amongst other issues may have influenced the outcomes. Enhancing the underexplored nurse mentor-mentee relationship may improve the retention of pre-registration nurses. The empirical study investigated the impact of a Compassion Focused Approaches to Nurse Mentoring Programme (CFA-MP) on nurse mentors and their mentoring practice. A repeated measures mixed methods empirical study investigated the application of CFA-MP. Emergent qualitative evidence suggested that CFA-MP is helpful in facilitating the mentoring processes and that its positive impact remained over a period of at least at the 12 months follow-up. The lack of statistical power and significant gaps in participants’ responses led to the quantitative analyses being unable to detect, any measureable impact of CFA-MP on nurse mentors. A qualitative service evaluation of a CFA-MP aimed to identify the key concepts in CFA that can be applied to and assist with the nurse mentoring process. Three themes emerged from the thematic analysis: ‘Utility of the Model’ ‘Receptiveness’ and ‘Learning’. More research is necessary to investigate whether CFA-MP would strengthen the mentor-mentee relationship.