A Recipe for Nurse Mentorship Programs

The topic of mentorship is near and dear to my heart. In my 17 years as a registered nurse, I have greatly benefited from being a mentee, both in my clinical practice and as a leader. I have also been gifted the opportunity of mentoring others - clinicians and leaders - and I'm so grateful to pay it forward! Mentorship is something that we have all likely - or hopefully - experienced in one way or another, whether formally or informally.

Distinct from precepting, mentorship is a tool we can and should leverage to create a sense of belonging for our teams and a pathway for their professional growth. It offers a way for ourselves and our colleagues to see our potential and achieve our goals. In my previous position as a nursing retention program coordinator and now as a co-Magnet® program director for a large rural academic medical center, I have grown our formal mentorship programs from one to six. Why? Because mentorship is an evidence-based tool that promotes engagement, retention and connection - something our nursing profession needs now more than ever.

Using a successful structure and process, and collaborating with our professional governance committees has helped me expand our formal mentorship opportunities. These programs align with the strategic goals but, more importantly, they are an answer to the requests and feedback from our nursing team. Having coached other organizations and other disciplines in creating their own meaningful mentorship programs, I'm excited to share with you our "special recipe," so that your organization and your team can benefit from this valuable tool, too.

Where to Begin?

A key strategy to developing one or more mentorship programs is to work within a framework. You can't boil the ocean with just one program. But a framework provides the structure needed to keep you moving forward with focus. When considering what type of program to create, consider these three elements:

• Clear Purpose and Intent - What are you trying to achieve through this mentorship program? How will it benefit the participants? What topics will you cover? The answers will provide you with helpful boundaries as you develop the program.
• Target Audience Identified - Who should be a mentee? Who should be a mentor? Who will your participants be, and how will they easily know this program is for them?
• Specific Outcomes - How will you measure the impact and success of the program? A strong structure and process will drive outcomes, and you will want to demonstrate your return on investment.

Those three elements have been essential for me and our nursing committees in creating new mentorship programs that are meaningful and feasible.

Guiding Principles for Success

With the creation and launch of each mentorship program, I use these guiding principles to develop a program that is set up for success:

• Start a pilot program.Start small to test the program format and content. Evaluate and adapt as you go. You will learn a lot! And you will also have success stories to help grow your program in the next phase.
• Nursing professional governance committees guide the work. Your nurses know what programs are needed. Involve your established governance committee to identify where to focus, and engage them in building, launching and evaluating the program. Mentorship can positively impact our professional practice environments, but it starts at the beginning.
• Integrate engagement data and learnings from the literature. Engagement data is valuable feedback to use in assessing your organization's strengths and where you need to improve. Use this data to help drive your program's purpose and/or content. Review the data with your governance committee and engage them in dialogue on how a mentorship program could improve the areas of opportunity. And go to the literature. What is known about your program's focus? How can that knowledge be used to determine the intent of your program or be integrated into the content provided to the mentees and mentors?
• Align with the nursing strategic plan. This principle should come naturally, as mentorship promotes engagement and retention. By using engagement data and direct clinician feedback, the program will focus on what the nursing workforce needs most.
• Program Support. Consider who will be the program coordinator overseeing logistics and marketing, coaching program leads, and assisting with program evaluation. Determine where this principle best fits into your nursing leadership and governance structure.
• Use available resources. Organizations have a lot of resources available to team members, but it may be difficult to remember or know which ones are most pertinent to the individual. Mentorship programs should integrate applicable resources into the program, not re-create the wheel. Increasing knowledge and comfort with accessing organizational resources can be a meaningful outcome of a mentoring experience.
• Nurses lead the programs. This principle is where the magic is found! Nurses who are passionate about the program's topic, and (if applicable) have experience with it, should lead it. Programs led by peers enhance approachability and professional safety for participants. Stepping into a program's lead role is also a fantastic opportunity to develop a nurse's leadership skills, for them to be mentored, and then mentor their successor.
• Mentee driven. Even though there's formality in it, the essential mentoring component is still present - the mentee is at the center. Mentees select their mentors, the mentees' goals drive the focus throughout the program, and mentors focus on what mentees need or want to discuss during each discussion.
• Commit to continual process improvement: Plan, do, study, act (PDSA). As you learn more, gather feedback and your workforce evolves, the program will need to evolve. Be open to feedback, involve your governance committee to evaluate and decide next steps, and continue to begin the PDSA cycle again.

Making Program Logistics Work for You

Once you have your program's purpose, target audience and outcome measures, and you have considered the guiding principles in developing your program, you need to determine how best to implement the mentorship program at your organization. Following are our programmatic logistics, which we have evolved and streamlined so that the same standard work and timeline is used for all six programs to maximize marketing and efficiency:

• Cohorts are offered twice a year for each program.
• Programs are six months long.
• Nurses sign up via an online survey.
• Mentor profiles are posted for mentees to self-select the top three choices from outside their department; program leads choose the pairs based on the mentee's preferences.
• During month one, a launch event is held for a meet-and-greet and to review the program's resources and expectations.
• Each month, individual mentee/mentor pairs meet using prepared materials that are specific to each program; the mentee's needs and urgent topics are always a priority.
  • Materials include:
    • Two or three topics with discussion prompts and organizational resources
    • Reflection activity
    • Journaling prompt
• During month six, a wrap-up event includes group discussion, a guest speaker and a certificate ceremony.
• A post-program evaluation is given to all participants for feedback on logistics, content and experiences.
• Throughout the year, one or two professional development classes are offered to all mentee and mentor participants as a special benefit. Mentee/mentor pairs are encouraged to attend together.
• Program leads/co-leads meet quarterly with the program coordinator (my role) to discuss successes, work through barriers, review evaluation data and prepare for the next cohort.

Types of RN Mentorship Programs

The type of program you establish will depend on your nursing workforce and the needs of your organization. Our first program was an RN to BSN program that supported working nurses who were going back to school. That first program evolved into the RN Degrees program noted below, along with the five additional uniquely tailored programs launched since that first mentorship pilot.

• RN Degrees | Designed to support all team members interested in or enrolled in a nursing degree program at any level
• New Graduate Transition to Practice | Provides a safe environment to ask questions and discuss concerns and successes as new graduate nurses move into their second year of practice
• Night Shift Leaders | Involve clinical nurses who are interested in professional growth and support as empowered nocturnal leaders
• Experienced Clinical Nurses | Network with colleagues, and leverage resources to meet their professional goals
• Formal Nurse Leaders | Increase competence and confidence through peer support and AONL competency-aligned content
• Advanced Practice Providers (APPs) | Build relationships with peers and experience support as an APP grows in their practice and professional role

Learnings Gained From the Past Seven Years of Coordinating Formal Mentorship Programs

A pilot program gives you a great place to start and learn what works best for your organization. Stay committed to continual process improvement.

• The magic is in the nurses who co-lead the programs! Support them to support their peers.
• Twelve months was too long, but six months was just right for our workforce. See what works best for your nurses.
• The intentional pairing of a mentee and a mentor from different departments can be intimidating, but ultimately it is the biggest benefit to participants. Not only does it provide a professional, safe space to discuss topics, it promotes networking, increases awareness of other practice areas and roles, and builds bridges throughout the organization.
• Communicate! And communicate again! So much is happening in our organizations and in our practice. Leverage as many different platforms as you can to promote the programs and to share success stories.
• Sometimes it takes a peer or a leader tapping a colleague on the shoulder and saying, "This would be a great fit for you - as a mentee or a mentor."
• Schedules are usually a barrier. Be creative and leverage the support of leadership to help participants prioritize this experience. It's a very small time commitment that can have a big, positive impact.
• This framework is like a recipe and can be replicated not only for nursing, but for other disciplines, too. I've coached access associates, respiratory therapists, academic teams and others to use this framework and program structure to develop their own mentorship programs.

What I've Heard From Our Mentees and Mentors

"Being a mentor helped me grow a lot - the process wasn't all about her growth, but mine as well." -Mentor

"Love, love, love this program. It's difficult to navigate how to grow as an RN. I gained so much information, support and encouragement." -Mentee

Our Results

• Over 500 unique participants from over 100 departments and 20 nursing roles
• 87% two-year retention rate
• 85% strongly agreed/agreed that topics and content were relevant and appropriate
• 85% strongly agreed/agreed that they gained knowledge and confidence using resources
• 97% would participate again

Don't Miss Out on This Best Practice for Retention and Engagement

Mentorship promotes a sense of belonging and connection among colleagues, and provides professional development and growth opportunities for mentees, mentors and nurses leading the programs. Using a formal program, with a strong structure and process, allows an organization to build and grow mentorship programs valued by their workforce. Whether the program is formal or informal, the mentee must be the priority, so that their goals and concerns are the focus. Investing in a formal mentorship program (or two or three) will benefit your organization and your people.

Acknowledgement

Special thanks to Jennifer T. Hall, MSN, RN, CNL, director of nursing professional practice, for her mentorship, support and leadership, which have helped me and our nurses do this work. Thank you for paving the way. And thank you to the nurse mentorship co-leads at UVA Health University Medical Center. You are the power and magic behind these programs.

What will your nurse mentorship program be?