Views of nurse mentors about their role.

The nurse mentor is important in the personal and professional development of undergraduate nurses, ensuring that nursing students are competent and well prepared for practice at the point of registration. The importance of a rigorous evidence base for mentors and fellow nurse educators to use to inform education and practice should not be overlooked. This article seeks to expand this knowledge base and acquire research data that is relevant, topical and in line with the latest thinking to support best practice in nurse mentorship and nursing student education.

War on attrition. Interview by Adele Waters.

The University of Glamorgan prides itself on the support it gives to nursing students, both practically and emotionally.

Predicting who will drop out of nursing courses: a machine learning exercise.

Introduction: The concepts of causation and prediction are different, and have different implications for practice. This distinction is applied here to studies of the problem of student attrition (although it is more widely applicable).

Background: Studies of attrition from nursing courses have tended to concentrate on causation, trying, largely unsuccessfully, to elicit what causes drop out.

'Catch it, encode it and measure it'.

Donna Mead, Head of School, School of Care Sciences, University of Glamorgan, explains how her early experiences as a ward sister gave her the drive and determination to seek research-based solutions to some of the conditions that she encountered.

When is it safer to say nothing? Some considerations on biases in sampling.

In nursing research, once one has a solid design, one has still to think about-.a sampling strategy and implementation. Too often, the paraphernalia of inferential statistical reasoning is inappropriately deployed when the achieved sample can in no way be claimed to represent the drawn sample.

The learning curve: the advantages and disadvantages in the use of focus groups as a method of data collection.

Focus groups are not simply a discussion between people, but are focused interviews exploring interactions between participants. In this paper, Ian Mansell, Glynis Bennett, Ruth Northway, Donna Mead and Laurie Moseley explore the complexities and practicalities of using focus groups in research, with reference to a study of palliative care services.

Postoperative pain assessment tools in day surgery: literature review.

Background: Postoperative pain is an expected phenomenon. However, its passage beyond acceptable limits is a common and costly experience. This is particularly the case in day surgery, partly because of the increasing demand to reduce waiting lists for elective surgery, and partly because of lack of knowledge about patients' experiences of postoperative pain and relevant published research.

Exploring doctor and patient views about risk communication and shared decision-making in the consultation.

Background: There have been significant conceptual developments regarding shared decision-making (SDM) and assessments of people's hypothetical preferences for involvement in treatment or care decisions. There are few data on the perceptions of patients and professionals about SDM in actual practice.

Objective: To explore, from paired doctor-patient interviews, participants' perceptions of SDM in the consultation and the level of consensus between the participants in the consultation process.

An evaluation of student nurses experiences of being a researcher in a mental health research project.

Thirteen student nurses from the Mental Health and Learning Disability branches (Project 2000) of the School of Care Sciences at the University of Glamorgan volunteered to participate in a research study as research assistants. Participation of this kind represents a novel, practical way of learning about research. Following training and data collection within the research study we evaluated the student's experience of training and participation.

Simulation in training questionnaire design.

Teaching students about the practicalities of questionnaire design and application can raise serious ethical problems if patients are involved in their research. The authors describe how the skills can be effectively taught without recourse to involving patients at all.

Personal experiences of designing questionnaires.

So much for the theory, hut what about the practice? Donna Mead provides an account of creating, implementing and evaluating questionnaires, drawn from her own research.