Ashlee Oikarainen

The aim of my doctoral research is to develop, implement and evaluate the effects of an educational intervention on mentors’ cultural competence and on their competence in mentoring culturally and linguistically diverse nursing students. Nursing students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds often face challenges related to cultural differences and language barriers during completion of their clinical placements. There is a need to educationally prepare mentors to provide culturally appropriate mentoring and to meet the individual needs of these students.

My doctoral research is being conducted within the QualMent project, which is a 28-month project co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme. The aim of the project is to develop mentors' competence in mentoring nursing students through mentor education. During this project we will develop a Clinical mentors' competence model, provide mentors in four European Union countries with education on clinical mentoring, and develop mentoring guidelines.

I have published 7 peer reviewed publications in international scientific journals.