Healthcare professionals' experiences of required competencies in mentoring of interprofessional students in clinical practice: A systematic review of qualitative studies.
Jonna Juntunen, Anna-Maria Tuomikoski, Sari Pramila-Savukoski and 4 others
PMID 39099212WHAT IT FOUND
Mentoring interprofessional student teams requires specific skills in building team identity, facilitating shared reasoning, and balancing clinical care with teaching.
Nurses, therapists and doctors described feeling unprepared to supervise peers from other professions without clear coordination and manager support.
Key findings
01Mentors frequently felt uncomfortable and unprepared to supervise students from professions other than their own, often lacking knowledge of other curricula and scopes of practice.
02Successful interprofessional mentoring depended on creating a shared team identity among mentors and ensuring precise coordination and communication with students before placement.
03Mentors struggled to balance their clinical responsibilities with the demands of team mentoring, describing the role as mentally straining without adequate time or resource allocation.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Only studies published in English, Swedish, or Finnish were included, potentially missing relevant global perspectives. The review included only qualitative findings from mixed-methods studies, ignoring quantitative data that might have provided different insights. Many included studies focused on initial experiences of interprofessional mentoring, so long-term sustainability and competence development were not well captured. Findings without illustrative quotes were excluded from the synthesis, which may have removed valid but poorly evidenced themes.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflict of interest. The research received no specific funding from public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume these findings prove that interprofessional mentoring improves patient outcomes. This review synthesises mentors' perceptions of their own competencies and challenges, not clinical effectiveness data. The certainty of evidence for all synthesized findings was rated as low.