Overview and experience of a nursing e-mentorship program

Exploring Online Mentorship as a Potential Strategy to Enhance Postgraduate Mental Health Nursing Education through Online Delivery: A Review of the Literature

The value of mentorship to professional development in nursing education has been consistently demonstrated in the literature. The benefits for mental health nursing are particularly noted for attracting nursing students and new graduates into this area of practice. The proliferation of online delivery of mental health nursing programs poses particular issues in providing mentorship to students. Despite changes to the mode of educational delivery, the mentorship literature primarily addresses face-to-face processes. The aim of this paper is to present a review of the literature pertaining to online mentorship. A literature search of the CinAHL, Medline, ProQuest and Google Scholar databases was undertaken to identify relevant literature. Hand searches of reference lists were also conducted. The findings demonstrate the paucity of literature addressing this topic. Evaluation of online mentorship programs are particularly scarce, small scale and usually conducted at one site only. Few descriptions of the content and structure are provided meaning that program development cannot benefit from existing knowledge and expertise. There is an urgent need for online mentorship accompanied by rigorous and systematic evaluation frameworks to maximize the benefits of mentorship to an online environment.

Effectiveness of Online Cancer Education for Nurses and Allied Health Professionals; a Systematic Review Using Kirkpatrick Evaluation Framework

Embedding online learning within higher education can provide engaging, cost-effective, interactive and flexible education. By evaluating the impact, outcomes and pedagogical influence of online cancer and education, future curricula can be shaped and delivered by higher education providers to better meet learner, health care provider and educational commissioners' requirements for enhanced patient care and service delivery needs. Using the Kirkpatrick's four-level model of educational evaluation, a systematic review of the effectiveness of online cancer education for nurses and allied health professionals was conducted. From 101 articles, 30 papers were included in the review. Educational theory is not always employed. There is an absence of longitudinal studies to examine impact; an absence of reliability and/or validity testing of measures, limited experimental designs taking account of power and few attempts to mitigate bias. There is, however, an emerging innovative use of mobile/spaced learning techniques. Evidence for clinical and educational effectiveness is weak offering insights into experiences and participant perceptions rather than concrete quantitative data and patient-reported outcomes. More pedagogical research is merited to inform effective evaluation of online cancer education, which incorporates and demonstrates a longer-term impact.

Multiple Myeloma Education: Results From the ACE Program's Digital, Serial Learning Approach

BACKGROUND

Understanding aspects of multiple myeloma (MM) from drug delivery to side effect management and survivorship are critical to patient management. The Advanced Clinical Educator (ACE) program in MM combined live and web-based activities to educate nurses to gain mastery of content and achieve ACE status.

OBJECTIVES

The primary objectives were to improve ACE candidates' practice skills and knowledge of MM and prepare them to educate others.

METHODS

20 ACE candidates were paired with an advisor and educated through a structured learning program. The RealMeasure® methodology measures the effect on intended learner cohorts, analyzing pre- and post-assessment data, as well as follow-up data, with a multidimensional metric that serves as a surrogate marker for performance.

FINDINGS

Learners from the ACE program and a national cohort improved substantially from baseline averages at pretest to high levels of proficiency at post-test. This curriculum model fosters subject matter expertise, leadership, professional networking, and peer-to-peer learning.