1. Conducting Effective Mentoring Visit
DATE?

2. Purpose The general purpose of an onsite mentoring visit is to:
provide teaching and support to health care workers in their delivery of care and treatment services
provide QI coaching
work with facility leadership and staff to address systems and resource issues that affect quality of care
Monitor and evaluate 2

3. Planning – before the visit
Depending on the length of the visit, you may not be able to observe every area
Planning is required to establish the priorities for the time you spend at each health care facility
Try to learn as much as you can about each site before your visit so that you can spend your time productively
-What are key areas that I might be focusing on during my visit?
-Are there any unusual or unique characteristics of the health facilities you will be visiting? 3

4. Planning – before the visit
Select a date
Create a schedule
Get required approvals
Organize transportation
Organize tools, materials, and resource 4

5. Planning Prioritization
Prioritization skills are your ability to see what tasks are more important and urgent
You give those tasks more of your attention, energy, and time.
You focus on what is important at the expense of lower value activities.
Tips:
-Make a list of tasks Be flexible
-Assess the value
-Be honest 5

6. During the site visit
Clinical mentoring visits can include a variety of components including:
-One-on-one case management observation
-Record review—registers, HMIS reports,…
-QI coaching
-Discussions and meetings to elicit feedback: identifying potential problem areas and issues and recommendations 6

7. Sequence of steps in a clinical mentoring visit
On-site teaching
Observe case management and reinforce skills
Review clinic based records
Clinic case review or simulation
QI coaching
Team meeting
Document the visit 7

8. After the visit Prepare a report after conducting a mentoring visit
The report should include the purpose of the visit
What you did
With whom
Issues or challenges to be addressed
Action items for follow-up
Who is responsible for what items and when the action item should be completed 8

9. After the visit, continued.
The report will serve as a reference and should be reviewed before the subsequent visit to:
-Enable tracking of progress made towards addressing issues identified as problematic 9

10. References
Perkins,L. (2015) How to Prioritize When Everything is a Priority: 5 Tips. [Accessed
International Training and Education Center on HIV(2011). A Guide to conducting site visit. 10

11. Thank you for your hard work & dedication to health and human rights!
Matilda Nikolasi talks with PIH clinician Joe Lusaka and was the first of many to be served during the new Dambe Health Center’s first day on April 25, 2016 in Malawi. She was screened for Hypertension, HIV and Diabetes during this visit through the SHARF (Screening for health and referrals at the facilities) initiative. (Photo by Nandi Bwanali / Partners In Health) 11