The Effectiveness and Use of Mentors in Nursing Leadership in Healthcare Practice Settings

There has been increased focus in utilizing mentoring to facilitate the leadership and professional development of nursing leaders. Mentoring is used both formally and informally to support leadership development, succession planning, retention, role transition, and skill development.  Benefits of mentoring include enhanced productivity, career satisfaction,  lower levels of job stress, psychosocial support and professional development. The reported experience of nursing leaders’ use of  mentors at the director and nurse executive level in healthcare system settings is limited.

 The purpose of this presentation is to describe mentoring best practices and share the results of a capstone study that examines the use and perceptions of formal and informal mentors in the leadership development of nursing leaders, specifically nursing directors and nurse executives within healthcare settings.  The study is a mixed methods, cross sectional, descriptive design with a convenience sample of nursing leaders in Wisconsin who are members of the Wisconsin Organization of Nurse Executives and a Wisconsin Center of Nursing leadership resource list.

 Understanding the experiences, barriers, and outcomes of mentoring will assist in the development of mentoring programs and will generate new knowledge about nurse leaders’ use of mentors originating outside of the discipline of nursing.