What is Mentoring?
Most people have a general understanding and a concept of mentoring, and indeed mentoring
goes on regardless of formal mentoring programs or not. Mentoring is what inspires us and
keeps us going and we tend to seek it out naturally, whether it be from family, from those in our community or in colleagues we admire within our work environment.
Mentoring as related to your work/career can have at least two distinct definitions:
Mentoring for a position
When one is desiring to become more proficient at their job or acclimated within their work environment, they often benefit from one-on-one direction. This is sometimes identified as apprenticing, precepting, coaching or mentoring. The distinctions in this
type of relationship are:
• The interaction is usually shorter term and of more intensity than a true "mentoring" relationship.
• The coach/mentor is someone who typically works in the same environment, or in the specific area related to project specific knowledge.
• Both mentor/mentee have the goal of skill mastery, or "fit" for the position for improved job performance and satisfaction in the work environment.
• The benefit to the mentor in this situation is an opportunity to teach what they know.
• The time involvement in this type of mentoring is usually done "on the job" and might be supported financially by the employing institution.
Mentoring for the profession
When one aspires to grow within their profession and look at longer term opportunities and seek assistance with the decisions that need to be made in regards to navigating their career path, they often benefit from someone who has been on a similar journey longer and who can offer insight. This individual can serve as a sounding board for complex decision making. A mentoring relationship of this type can also help bridge distinct areas within the profession; helping the mentee have access to areas not provided within their current job, or access to key contacts.
• This interaction is usually longer term, 6 months or longer and with a meeting set based on a more casual time-frame (once per month), or on an as-need basis.
• Though a mentor of this type can work in the same location/area, it is more typical for this type of mentor to be at a higher level and possibly in a very different area within the profession; perhaps even retired.
• The goal of this relationship is more mutually beneficial in that the mentor often comes away benefiting in their personal growth along with the mentee and can enrich their nursing experience from a "full spectrum" perspective.
• Because this type of mentoring is not necessarily position specific, and serves to benefit the individual's quest for knowledge within their profession, it is usually accomplished outside of the work environment and might be solely on a volunteer basis.
• This type of mentoring may be supported by a professional organization of which your membership sponsors.
This grant served to accomplish a variety of mentoring matches, including those for target specific
tasks such as assistance with research or publishing; but more specifically it sought to address
the need for mentors in cross discipline environments, or to serve as a venue in Mentoring for the "profession" vs. mentoring for a "position".
These types of mentoring relationships are sometimes harder to establish due to needing contacts outside of ones immediate work environment. In contrast, mentoring as a way of developing specific
skill sets for "a position" shares mutual responsibility with the institution or unit benefiting from skill development and job mastery, (and this is why this is not always called mentoring and indeed is
more in the realms of training or new staff retention initiatives). Mentoring for "the profession" is led
by the individual's own unique desire to grow within their profession regardless of their current
position, (though this may be beneficial to their current position as well).
-
How-To Process:
Program Design & Development:
Documents that were developed to build the CPDM mentoring program, including the design
and quality standards utilized:
Registering Mentors:
Registering on-line was required in order to gather information needed to build a mentor
database for specific areas of expertise. The following document is a combination of two pages
from the original web site: the explanation page along with the mentor registration page.
Requirements to Become a Mentor :
Attend Mentor Action Day :
Mentor Action Day was developed to educate mentors to the scope, purpose and the process of our mentoring program as well as to provide fundamentals of a productive mentoring relationship as well as to introduce our cultural competency module, (a requirement of our mentor training). This program was designed to be delivered in a half-day format with three continuing education credits earned for attendance. The format included a speaker and a presentation from the Chief of Nursing as to the institutional importance of mentoring. Attendees were either volunteered by peers or self-nominated and the class size could accommodate between 20 - 60 attendees.
To view the portion of the training day that covered the "Nuts and Bolts" of the mentoring program plus training exercises developed to illustrate common and not so common elements of a productive mentoring relationship, click on the slide below.
(Click here for 31 page .pdf document)
Complete Cultural Competency Module:
The requirement of our mentoring program included a cultural competency component.
(Click here to view a 10 page .pdf document)
Initiating mentoring assignment - Mentor Statement of Understanding
The mentoring program was developed by incorporating both structured and unstructured components. The process for becoming a mentor or being assigned a mentor followed a structured process, but mentoring activities within each mentor match was unstructured due to the wide variety of possible mentoring arrangements. (A few examples of the variety include: new nurse assimilation, a nurse looking to gain knowledge regarding research or publishing, or perhaps a nurse seeking to enter a managerial track.)
The objectives of each mentoring match needed to be established by the individuals not by the program (again due to the potential wide range of mentoring needs), and this was accomplished through Mentoring Statement of Understanding. This document was developed with the thought that this was meant to be "explorative", not "prescriptive". It was developed with careful attention to the fact that this document should start a conversation but it would not tell either party "what to do". This also models the fundamental belief that a true mentoring relationship is not centered around dictates, rather exploration and that a mutual consensus must be established between both parties when developing objectives and boundaries of the relationship.
Lessons Learned & Future Recommendations:
"The concept of a mentor is familiar in the world of business, but more foreign to nursing. Mentors do more than teach skills; they facilitate new learning experiences, help new nurses make career decisions, and introduce them to networks of colleagues who can provide new professional challenges and opportunities. mentors are interactive sounding boards who help others make decisions." (Kathleen Dracup, From novice to expert to mentor: shaping the future. American Journal of Critical Care. Nov. 2004)
This statement serves to corroborate what appears to be an issue around the operational definition of mentoring within the nursing profession. The concept of mentoring is often thought of as an extension of skill development for a specific role or position. Clarity around the type of mentoring is essential as it will impact expectations around the support of such activity, (both financial and time wise), as well as serve the appropriate development of programming and subsequent effective marketing and educational efforts.
Program Development Suggestions:
- Identify parameters of mentoring program including stakeholders and drivers.
- Do a needs assessment of nurses
- Do a needs assessment of leaders
- How are the needs the same and how are they different?
- (i.e. an institution may have a need to retain their new hires longer and new hires may have a need to learn their role and subsequent critical skills in a more nurturing environment, the health care industry may have a need to have more nurses ).
- Develop an operational definition of mentoring with the drivers of the program in mind. (i.e. a mentoring program to develop nurse managers would be driven by an institutions need to proactively deal with future management vacancies -- it is the institution who becomes the driver of such a program as opposed to an individual's professional development quest.) Obtain agreement from all stakeholders.
- Anticipate candidate recruitment issues.
- Be prepared for more nurses to volunteer to be a mentor vs. seeking out a mentor (It may be helpful to include in the needs assessment a way to identify potential candidates willingness for role selection as a way to better gauge an equal supply and demand -- which is critical for program development as unmatched capacity only serves to frustrate those who may be waiting to participate.)
- What are the potential barriers to being a mentor or mentee in your defined program? Time? Location? Or perhaps something more subjective as the willingness to seek help when an existing culture may be more geared to being a helper.
- Be creative in how to engage nurses in the process especially if they don't see themselves seeking help - rather providing it. Elements of both giving and receiving may be come crucial components of program design.
- Decide on mandatory or volunteer participation - certain mentoring situations are more conducive of one over the other and will be based on the driver of the program. (i.e. will it be a requirement to have all first year nurses paired with a mentor?)
- Who will run the program? A unit? A professional association? This will define expectations as to if it is paid or voluntary and where it occurs - during work hours or personal time.
- If the program serves more of an institutional need (better preparation for skill areas, or retaining nurses), then consider calling it training (or unit based mentoring), and pay mentors/educators. Make the distinctions clear to the participants as many nurses have inherently different concepts of mentoring.
- If program serves more of a "call to nursing" or personal professional development (i.e. to make social connections or to teach skills outside of unit function, or to gain encouragement from a more senior person), it may be accomplished with volunteers (non-paid mentors, etc.).
- Identify who has the primary responsibility of mentoring based on need:
Mentoring Needs and Stakeholders
| RN Category & Need |
Educator
School |
Employer
Institution |
Trade or Industry Groups |
Service or Volunteer Organizations |
| Student |
Practice or exposure |
Primary |
Secondary |
|
|
| First year |
Skill acquisition and retention |
|
Primary (Care Unit)
Secondary (HR) |
|
|
| Mid-level |
Retention and/or skill advancement |
|
Primary |
Secondary |
|
| Nurse Professional Development |
Research, publishing, Advanced educational opportunities |
Secondary |
|
Primary |
|
| Legacy Stage |
Knowledge transfer, volunteering |
|
Secondary |
Secondary |
Primary |
The above chart may be helpful in identifying program development responsibilities and ownership - which is essential in identifying participant expectations regarding time commitments, location and compensation (if not volunteer based).
Mentoring Program Outcomes and Observations :
Click here to read about the observations associated with our mentoring program in the grant outcome page: Lessons Learned - Mentoring
Developed by: Marietta Van Buhler, Program Manager - UMHS Nursing Administration for HRSA grant #:D65HP05254 – Principal Investigator: Margaret Calarco, PhD, RN (2005-08)
