Mentors' competence in mentoring nursing students in clinical practice: Detecting profiles to enhance mentoring practices

AIMS: To describe the mentoring competence of clinical practice nurse mentors and identify different mentor profiles. DESIGN: Cross‐sectional research design, secondary analysis. METHODS: An international, cross‐sectional study design was performed in five European countries. A total of 1 604 mentors from 33 healthcare organizations participated in the study between 2016–2019. The Mentors' Competence Instrument (MCI), which includes seven sub‐dimensions and 44 items, was used to collect data. K‐means cluster and binary regression analyses were performed to detect mentor profiles and determine how various factors affect competence, respectively. RESULTS: The K‐means cluster analysis identified three distinct profiles: A (n = 926); B (n = 566); and C (n = 85). The profiles showed significantly different values (p < .001) across all seven areas of mentoring competence. In comparison with the other profiles, nurses in profile A were older, had more work experience and were more probably to have completed mentoring‐specific training.