Mentorship: The Experiences of a Tutor in a Pre-registration Operating Department Practice Education Programme

Abstract

Introduction

The author is a theatre nurse with more than twenty years experience of perioperative care. For the majority of her time in clinical practice the author was involved in the training and education of both student nurses and student operating department practitioners (ODPs). This involvement started, following training, as a mentor and assessor for both groups of students, leading to the position of internal verifier for the NVQ programmes for ODPs and perioperative health support workers. This experience in education and training led to promotion as training co-ordinator for the critical care directorate of a busy district general hospital. For the past seven years the author has been employed as a senior lecturer on a three year ODP pre-registration programme at a North West university.