Building the Mentor Role

In practice

A department establishing mentor posts. The imperatives of the role settled first from the source, then the remainder individualised to the setting. Time allocated and written into the job description, with administrative support named and accountability assigned, because each of those appears on the barrier list. The mentoring aimed at what clinicians believe about evidence-based practice and whether they think they can do it, not only at what they know — the chapter's finding being that knowledge had already been taught. Emotional intelligence treated as competence to develop across the four domains. The mentor planning, implementing and monitoring outcomes, attending to processes as well as results, and measuring what the role itself changed so it can be defended when budgets tighten.