The dental healthcare professionals' competence in mentoring students in the clinical practice

Objective The aim of this study was to evaluate dentists', dental hygienists' and dental assistants' competence in mentoring students and to identify distinct mentor profiles. Methods The study employed a cross-sectional design. Data were collected using the Mentors' Competence Instrument (MCI), which includes 45 items structured under seven mentoring competence sub-dimensions. The data were collected during autumn 2017 from dentists, dental hygienists and dental assistants working in the Finnish primary healthcare (n = 1097) using a paper survey, whilst dentists (n = 26) who have completed mentoring education in one university completed an electronic questionnaire. Cases with more than 5% missing data (n = 164) were listwise deleted, whilst the remaining data (n = 933) underwent analysis. K-mean clustering was used to identify significantly different mentor profiles, whilst comparisons of mentoring competence between the identified profiles were performed with Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney tests. Results Three distinct mentor profiles (A, B and C) that differed in the level of mentoring competence were identified. The participants in profile A encompassed mostly dental assistants, profile B included mostly dental assistants and dentists, and profile C mainly comprised dentists and dental assistants. Profiles A, B and C differed significantly in terms of education, job title, role of mentor and participation in mentoring education. The largest difference in competence was observed between participants of profiles A and C. Each profile differed significantly from the other two across all seven competence areas. Most of the participants had not previously received any mentoring education. Conclusion There is room for improvement in the competence of dentistry student mentors, especially regarding knowledge of effective mentoring practices, goal-oriented mentoring, mentor characteristics and motivation for mentoring. Every mentor that works with oral healthcare students should receive mentoring training.