OBSERVACIÓN A LA SEGUNDA OBJECIÓN

There was general agreement among the IRNs that it is valuable and necessary to be assigned a mentor who can introduce them to working practices and provide on-the-spot help and advice when they encountered problems.

The system is different here, you need someone to put you through … you ask so many persons and it’s quite annoying at times and you are expected to know [inaudible]…and keep asking, you go to the libraries, you read the UKAS, you have to research, do a lot of paperwork to like get to know things but you don’t really, you really need someone to put you through the system, you know, but when there’s nobody there really to help you out and there’s no way you can just come to a strange country, a different country from yours with different culture, backgrounds and everything and expect to stand on your feet. You keep falling and falling and standing and falling and standing until you can stand, but you really need a stone to step on somehow, you know.

(female, 25 years old, Nigerian, black, D grade)

So I found it was easier for me to pour it [the difficulties I experienced with new nursing practices] out on to my mentor and then she would sort of explain to me that things are now different from what it used to be before.

(female, 56 years old, Zimbabwean, black, D grade)

Sometimes, the support required could also be of a personal nature.

I had a mentor as well, but soon after a while I was doing the refresher course and I was able to open up more to my mentor than to the rest of the people I was working with because there was so much bullying in my team … I needed a shoulder to cry on.

(female, 56 years old, Zimbabwean, black, D grade)

One suggested that in order for the mentor to have a better understanding for the difficulties IRNs experience it would be ideal if she had experience as an IRN herself.

If you had somebody that was, that is established in that hospital or unit that had worked their way up from being a foreign nurse, worked their way up the system, if you had [inaudible]…tell you that when I started here I felt exactly the same and what things I encountered that she should be aware of and therefore do this and this and this and that can help you in making things easier. I think that will help a great deal.

(female, 30 years old, South African, white, E grade)

Some NHS organisations have recognised the benefits of such a buddy system and that earlier arrived IRNs can provide valuable support for new IRNs (RCN 2003: 19). However, several participants in the focus groups had been disappointed with the support they had received from their mentor. They had to fight to receive support.

I was given a mentor, but … I was disappointed because my mentor wasn’t up to date. I mean she wasn’t putting me, uhm, putting me through properly, you know. I have to press on her, to be running after her [inaudible]…what to do please because I have got a book to sign, so I would check into the book and, uhm, run to her and there’s this general assumption that I should know everything and I came to England purposely to be [inaudible]…and to update my knowledge in

[inaudible]…practice and, uhm, I get from it different cultural background and but in here I expected her to have given me proper induction. … I have to use my initiative most of the time and [inaudible]…and you know here the amount of documentation, the way of doing things is quite different from where I’m coming from but my mentor they are impatient. She’s impatient with me.

(female, 36 years old, Nigerian, black, D grade)

Others complained that it was difficult to access their mentor due to different working schedules.

My mentor personally was not working with me until I asked. Ideally I should have been working with my mentor and, you know, asking questions but you see they’re put in on some nice duty where my mentor is not night duty and they’re probably using us as carers.

(female, 42 years old, Nigerian, black, D grade)

You have a mentor, you don’t work with your mentor, you don’t see your mentor, you’re on early shifts, you’re on day shifts, she’s on night, you’re on night, she’s on day and she has to assess you. You work with her maybe once in a month. … you need someone to put you through.

(female, 25 years old, Nigerian, black, D grade)

… in the department we were given mentors but like my mentor really I’ve never met her today. ... she was in her day of sick leave and we’ve never met, so I’m still waiting for the day because she’s coming back on 20th February and maybe she’s going to start showing me things, I don’t know, just great expectations. But most of the time she’s, she’s sick, if she’s not sick she’s on annual leave, but she’s still alive I’m sure. I don’t know.

(female, 52 years old, South African, black, E grade)

A different problem concerned the motivation of the mentors and the procedures of appointing suitable mentors for IRNs.

… mentors are very hit and miss, so that, and often very reluctant to take on that role anyway, it’s allocated and they don’t want to do it. There’s no place where you can get general information about any education that’s happening and nobody sends out flyers to say this course or this study day is happening, it’s all [inaudible]…all over the place. I mean if you want any kind of support at all you have to get, you have to find your own group of people and people are very afraid and don’t want to

I actually was told to pick my own mentor, I didn’t really know those people. It just needs more structure, objectives and things to achieve.

(female, 47 years old, Australian, white, E grade)

But even in cases where the mentor was available and ready to help the IRN to adapt to new practice and new technology, there could be a problem in the relationship. As described in chapter 3 the IRNs who took part in this study were generally very experienced before arriving and, in many cases, they had held senior positions in their home countries. They found it humiliating and professionally degrading if a mentor was insensitive in front of patients, and, as an unfortunate consequence, this could result in the IRN not asking for advice and help in the future. A focus group participant described her fellow IRN’s experience:

... there’s no professionalism in their teaching. The mentor would say maybe in front of the patients: “Oh, you mean you don’t know how to use this. Come, come, I’ll show you”. So everyone around looks. The mentor is a very young girl who is so fast in her grades, is an F grade, God knows how, and then my friend is very

experienced nurse, who has been working for maybe the past 25 years abroad, teaching as well and so on, and she feels so … so then she feels: “I will stop asking”. If you ask this girl she will say: “Come, come, come”, you know, in front of everyone. “You don’t know how to use this, come, I’ll show you.” I don’t know, I don’t like that attitude.

(female, 40 years old, Zambian, black, E grade)

Another research participant described how she felt abandoned by her mentor after a new introduction pack had been introduced and the new large group of IRNs had arrived.

… You try to get to your mentor, you try to get to your ward manager, like me, actually I don’t really have a mentor because I came here, I had a mentor, fine, they said she is my mentor. Okay, then the next batch of people that came to the hospital were the Filipinos and the trust recruited them from the Philippines and then she had the trust pack, but there was a consultancy that recruited us and posted us to the hospitals … so we had a different pack. And my pack was going on well and I was fine until she came with her own pack, so we had to, because our mentor was like the teaching assessment nurse of the ward, of the department, so when she saw that pack she said she didn’t know anything about my pack and I was just dumped, completely. She said I had to look for somewhere else to work when I finished my adaptation, I had to do this, I wasn’t protected from the work, so I was really down. I had to like go to the ward manager … I had to wait for her at her car, wait for her, I was like a pest, I had to look for her because fine, the ward is quite busy, it’s very busy, but you have to, I had to stay after work, she had to put, she said the next time she didn’t see me I could call the police for her and all that and she ended up not seeing me. You really have to move to get what you want.

It was a recurrent theme in the IRNs’ descriptions that they had to be very outgoing and assertive to get the help and guidance they needed.