Department of Nursing Science

Aim and objective. This systematic review describes mentoring of nursing students in clinical placements. Background. Mentoring in nursing has been widely investigated, but mentoring among students has remained vague. There is no universal agreement on student mentoring in nursing placements; therefore, mentoring approaches vary. A unified description of student mentoring is needed to ensure the quality of placement learning in nursing organisations. Design. Systematic review. Method. The data were collected from nursing research articles over 20 years . The articles (n = 23) were analysed using inductive content analysis. Results. Mentoring of nursing students in clinical placements was described according to two themes: (1) facilitating nursing students' learning by creating supportive learning environments and enabling students' individual learning processes, (2) strengthening students' professionalism by empowering the development of their professional attributes and identities and enhancing attainment of students' professional competence in nursing.

Aims and objectives. To examine nursing staff's perceptions about how often they provide interventions of emotional support and the level of competence needed on neurosurgical wards to support traumatic brain injury patients' family members. Background. Traumatic brain injury in one individual affects the health of their whole family. Studying the emotional support provided by nursing staff is important because such support is crucial for the family members of a traumatic brain injury patient during the acute phase of treatment. Members of the nursing staff provide emotional support to family members by consoling them; this alleviates insecurity, anxiety, hopelessness and depression. Design. A structured self-reported questionnaire presented to 172 nurses working on neurosurgical wards. The response rate was 67% (n = 115). Methods. Descriptive statistics were used to determine how often nurses provided emotional support to the traumatic brain injury patients family members and one-way ANOVA to examine the relationships between the background variables and the respondents' evaluations of how often they gave emotional support to brain injury patients' family members. Results. Thirty-seven percentage of nurses stated that they always took account of family members' individuality and 65% that they were always respectful. All registered nurses and staff members with long work experience (21 years or more) on a neurosurgical ward reported that they took family members' feelings of anger and guilt into consideration slightly more often than other nursing staff did. Most nurses considered these skills to represent basic competencies. Conclusion. Further service training on dealing with difficult emotions of traumatic brain injury patients' family members could help nurses to face these situations. Both education and work experience affected the frequency at which nursing staff provided emotional support to traumatic brain injury patients' family members. Relevance to clinical practice. The results are relevant for example when planning specialised studies or in-service training for neuro-nurses, as well as when selecting the subjects to be addressed during the orientation of a new staff member. In addition, the results should help nursing staff to understand their role in the emotional support of family members.

This systematic literature review describes how adult traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients' family members received support. The research question was ''What in healthcare constitutes support for a TBI patient's family members?'' The data for this review were based on 22 empirical studies published in scientific journals in 2004Y2010, which were found in the Cinahl, PsychINFO, and ISI Web of Knowledge databases. The review includes the study design, sample, method, and main results. The data were analyzed using content analysis. Social support for brain injury patients' family members was divided into 3 main categories: informational, emotional, and practical support. The subcategories of informational support were information about the patient's symptoms, information about care, quality of information, and information about the prognosis. The subcategories of emotional support were taking emotions into account, caring, listening, and respecting. The subcategories of practical support were support in decision making, promoting the welfare of the family, encouraging family members to participate in care, cooperation with the family members, and counseling services. The results are available for nurses in practical work. The review offers nurses a structure for supporting TBI patients' families, and according to this review, supporting TBI patients' families appears to have many dimensions. The results suggest that nurses should be informed that it is important for family members to know the facts about TBI to understand the condition and to receive practical advice on how to help their significant other with TBI with daily activities. In addition, the results provide a basis for further research and development of interventions that support brain injury patients and their family members.

Background: People with a traumatic brain injury (TBI) constitute a significant patient care population: every year almost 8 million brain injuries are diagnosed worldwide. Social support (informational, emotional and practical) has been identified as one of the essential factors that help TBI patients' families to cope with the severe situation. Aims: This paper reports on a study of how often nursing staff provide interventions of informational support and the level of competence needed by nursing staff working in all neurosurgical wards to support the families of TBI patients. Methods: The target group included all nursing staff (n=172) in all neurosurgical wards in Finland. Data was collected via a self-completion questionnaire in 2010. The participants were nurses (n=115; response rate 67%) working in the neurosurgical wards of all five Finnish university hospitals. The data were statistically analysed using SPSS version 19. Descriptive statistics, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, one-way ANOVA, two-way ANOVA, MANOVA and linear regression were used. Results: Overall, the nurses often provided informational support to TBI patients' families. They often told them about treatment and about their own responsibilities to family members; by contrast, they seldom informed family members about prevention of secondary injuries. There was a connection between the age and work experience of the nursing staff and the provision of information about secondary injuries. Conclusions: Nurses with less work experience may have limited competence in delivering information to family members. This should be taken into consideration when planning the staffing of shifts, ensuring that there are always enough experienced nurses on duty.