Creating Effective Interprofessional Mentoring Relationships in Palliative Care- Lessons from Medicine, Nursing, Surgery and Social Work

Abstract

Palliative Care requires multidisciplinary teamwork to achieve its patient specific objectives. Success of this approach pivots on nurturing effective interprofessional relationships through the provision of holistic support and multidimensional training of multiprofessional Palliative Care team members. Mentoring is seen as an effective means of facilitating multiprofessional collaborations however little data exists on operationalizing an interprofessional mentoring program in Palliative Care. To address this gap and circumnavigate the context-specific nature of mentoring, we scrutinized mentoring approaches in medicine, surgery, nursing and medical social work to identify common elements of mentoring within their respective practices that will provide the basis of an interprofessional mentoring in Palliative Care. Thematic analysis of 20 reviews of undergraduate and postgraduate mentoring programs in medicine, surgery and nursing suggest that successful mentoring programs are underscored by effective nurturing and support of mentoring relationships. Successful mentoring relationships are built on strong relational ties between mentees and mentors. Delineating the key elements to effective mentoring relationships allow for the forwarding of a basic framework to enhance relational ties within interdisciplinary mentoring in Palliative Care and the proffering of an evidence-based platform for the adoption of a cognitive apprenticeship model that can guide the operationalization of a multiprofessional mentoring program in Palliative Care.