Nurse Faculty Mentoring: Job Satisfaction and Retention of Nursing Faculty in Baccalaureate Nursing Programs

The purpose of this study was to analyze the relationship of mentoring of nursing faculty and job satisfaction with intent to stay at their current academic institution.  A quantitative, descriptive design was conducted using a convenience sampling of baccalaureate nursing faculty from three Mid-central schools of nursing in the United States of America.  A survey was distributed via Survey Monkey to professional email addresses of 172 baccalaureate nursing faculty, both online and onsite, who do not teach in lab or clinical settings.  A significant result of the study was 26% of the participants indicated they had no experienced nurse educator that took a special interest in their teaching career (n= 50). 59% of the participants continued to answer specific questions regarding their mentoring experiences (n=32), indicating the participants did have a mentoring experience.  Results of the study indicate there is a positive relationship between mentoring, job satisfaction, and retention of nursing faculty.  26% of the sample had no sort of mentoring and it was “sink or swim” and no experienced nurse educator took a special interest in the participant’s teaching career (n=13) and were not required to complete the remainder of the survey.  The results of this study indicates nursing programs that utilized experienced faculty as mentors may have an increase in job satisfaction and retention of nursing faculty in their baccalaureate nursing programs.