Background:
The amount of culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) health care students in growing steadily in Finland. Still, little attention has been paid to preparedness and support of mentors and guiding teachers facilitating their clinical training and little research done from the supervising parties’ perceptions on collaborative support during clinical training of CALD health care students.

Aim:
The study explores mentoring nurses' and guiding teachers’ views of support needs and means when supervising non-native Finnish-speaking health care students.

Method:
The data was collected through a thematic interview from one wellbeing service county’s health care staff members and one university of applied sciences teachers (=8). Qualitative data were analyzed using inductive analysis method.

Results:
The mentoring staff and guiding teachers had both similar and different support needs. Majority of the mentors needed support from their colleagues and their superiors in their guidance work. In addition, guiding teachers perceived the support need of the clinical mentors being greater than their own and thus ended up giving support and mentoring to clinical mentors in addition to students. This affected the students’ motivation to learn and later work in the unit. Possible means of support were educating and raising awareness on how to guide CALD health care students, peer support and networking possibilities. Successful mentoring collaboration and support was seen as major factor in quality clinical training mentoring and integration in the workplace and society.

Conclusion:
The management of clinical training units and universities should consider the support needs of clinical mentors and teacher and facilitate collaborative support services. Enabling support for all parties leads to quality clinical supervision and support for students thus creating a positive learning environment. This in turn aids in the integration process and recruitment of new staff members. The growing amount of CALD health care students challenges the workplaces on demand of workforce and on facilitating good learning opportunities for all future health care workers to tackle the growing shortage of health care staff in Finland. More research is needed on the readiness of workplaces to welcome diverse students and employees to the field.

Keywords: Clinical training, mentoring, education, diversity, inclusion.