Mentoring in Training of Operating Room Students: A Systematic Review

The research results showed that there was a relatively large gap in training operating room skills and clinical practice, so that clinical training did not enable students to perform the required tasks. One of the new approaches in training is a mentoring program. The aim of this study was to review mentoring of operating room students.
This study was a Systematic Review of Persian and English data including those available in PubMed, Ovide, Elsevier, ProQuest, IranMedex, SID, and Magiran databases, searched using key terms such as mentor, mentee, mentoring, mentorship, operating room, and surgery from 2001 to 2015. All articles and studies about mentoring were retrieved, which included 342 articles. Of this number, only 27 articles were about the use of mentoring in the operating room.
In total, 27 articles were analysed including 18 research articles and nine review articles in two themes. Themes included: 1- Faculty and surgical technologists act as mentors for operating room students 2- Important mentoring strategies and creating clinical competency in newcomers to the operating room.
Mentoring approach effects improvement of clinical competency in operating room students. It is suggested for this method to be used in the training of medical and paramedic students.