Difference Between Mentoring and Debriefing in Clinical Supervision

Running head: CLINICAL SUPERVISION
Clinical supervision
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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CLINICAL SUPERVISION
Introduction:
With the busy works schedule many nursing professionals and midwives faces different
pressure and challenges in providing care in complex health and social care services. They
experience a different range of emotional trauma which affected resilience and wellbeing. As
discussed by Cutcliffe and Sloan (2018), apart from personal wellbeing, because of these
challenges in the complex care environment, nurses failed to provide compassionate, person-
centered care to the service user around the globe. 49% of registered nurses under 30 and 40%
of nurses over 30 years failed to provide person-centered care because of experiencing burnout
(Snowdon et al., 2016). Evidence in both ancient and literature clearly suggested that well
supported, valued and well developed skilled staffs are successful high-quality patient-centered
care to the service users which resulted in the high patient satisfaction and less job burnout. To
improve the wellbeing , nurses and midwives require clinical support and clinical supervision.
In literature, a diverse range of clinical support has been identified which include mentoring,
professional coaching, clinical preceptorship, and debriefing where these paper will focus on
mentoring and debriefing process as clinical support. However, although clinical supervision and
clinical support both used by nurses to facilitate their practice accumulated literature suggested
that these two processes have few difference. The aim of the paper is to critically differentiate
two clinical support with clinical supervision with the reference of forum post and literature.
This paper will provide a concise difference of mentoring and debriefing from the clinical
supervision with the assistance two peer post and literature, identify the strength and weakness of
these three processes in the following paragraphs.

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Discussion:
Mentoring as clinical support:
In nursing, mentoring is highlighted one of the crucial clinical support where highly
experienced nurses act as a guide, expert and role model for the newly joined nurse or who are
facing critical issues. As discussed by Welch (2017), mentoring is reciprocal and collaborative
learning and the relationship between the guide and nurse or nurses with mutual goals and shared
responsibility. Mentoring is crucial for nurses who are exposed to new experiences of health
care health and required to boost self-esteem and confidence in providing safe and responsive
care in various departments (Howard et al., 2016). Therefore, mentoring as a clinical support is
applied in the clinical practice for guiding novice nurses. As discussed by Lin et al. (2016), the
concept of mentorship is not new, as Florence night angle had mentored many novice nurses in
her days. The key component of the mentorship is concept analysis where the role of the nurses
where the key role of the mentor is the provision of professional and clinical support, enhancing
the learning opportunities (Howard et al., 2016). Mentor also provides the key insight as well as
feedback on various aspect of the practice of mentee’s to empower them (Welch, 2017). As
discussed by Clement and Welch (2017), mentor can be a practice educator or clinical tutor
where they can be signing mentor and sign off mentor. Nursing and midwives council code
stated that “professional registered should be model of integrity and leadership that others will
aspire to and are required to support the novice “ which mainly focus on accountability whereas
sign off mentors strictly focuses on assessments of the skills and qualifications of the supporting
nurses. Therefore, to provide accurate mentoring to the novice nurses, according to the NMC
standard 2.2.2(Competence and outcomes for a practice teacher) a mentor should possess “skills
of effective working relationships, facilitation of learning, assessment and accountability,

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evaluation of learning, creating an environment for learning and Evidence-based practice
Leadership” (Nmc.org.uk, 2019). The mentoring requires similar nursing professional values as
the code of conduct (principle 1 to 7) such as respect, trust, partnership, integrity, honest to
support the target group.
There are a few distinct differences between mentoring and clinical support. Considering
clinical supervision, it is slightly different from the mentoring process since the main purpose of
the clinical supervision is provide support to the nurses or midwives for coming up with the
stress they are experiencing in the workplace (Cutcliffe & Sloan, 2018). Unlike mentoring
programs, clinical supervision provides an opportunity for the supervisors to build a trustworthy
relationship with the supervisee which are nurses and midwives who are seeking support (Ford et
al., 2016). While mentoring involves experienced nurses as clinical educators, Pollock et al.
(2016), suggested that clinical supervision facilitates by a different of people which differs in
terms of the experience of the clinical supervision. Three main groups provide clinical
supervision such as individuals who completed the training, clinical NMHPS group, researchers.
While mentoring is conducted in the context of outside the immediate work setting, clinical
supervision conducted within the work setting but away from the clinical work area (Snowdon et
al., 2016). Mentoring is mainly conducted to boost the self-esteem and confidence of student
nurses or who are new to health care sectors and experiences, clinical supervision provides
support to the midwives and nurses who are experience commitment fatigue or workplace
burnout (Ford et al., 2016). The mentoring requires a high level of commitment and may require
time outside of the working areas whereas clinical supervision also requires the same level of
commitments but mostly require commitments within the working areas (Gray, 2018). Various
literature suggested that not in only terms of aim and objectives, In terms of outcome, both