A clinical mentoring framework for health professionals

Clinical mentoring is recommended by many international health professional organisations as a continuing professional development (CPD) activity to enhance clinical practice. Unlike professional mentoring, which has broad aims related to work capability and career progression, clinical mentoring has a targeted purpose of extending a health professional's practice. Recent research has demonstrated promise for clinical mentoring for improving patient outcomes in physiotherapy practice. However, how clinical mentoring has been practically implemented in this research is not well described, and it is unclear whether the features of this form of mentoring are evidence-based in design. This conceptual paper proposes a clinical mentoring framework, that is based on pragmatic, evidence-informed data and theories. The framework incorporates four key elements: connection, comfort disruption, perspective sharing and time. These four key elements are scaffolded across four phases of the mentoring journey: preparation, pre-mentoring, mentoring, and post-mentoring. These elements and phases were synthesised from research of physiotherapist learning and the broader learning research and theory. While grounded in the physiotherapy context, the clinical mentoring framework is versatile, with applicability across multiple disciplines and settings including formal CPD events, workplace mentoring, and post-professional education that is focused on clinical practice development. The framework can be tailored to individual learners’ needs, applied in one-to-one or group mentoring, and to the in-person and online delivery of clinical mentoring. Using the clinical mentoring framework to inform CPD practice by professional organisations, private practices, public health networks and tertiary institutions would facilitate evidence-informed education of health professionals to enhance clinical expertise.