How to Set Up a Nurse Mentorship Program

Nurses with fewer than five years of experience account for one-third of hospital nurse turnover. If your organization is looking to combat this statistic, a nurse mentorship program may be a good starting place.

New nurses are vulnerable to burnout for a number of reasons. It can take months to acclimate to a nursing specialty and develop the necessary clinical skills. If they’re in an unwelcoming or strained work environment, it’s natural to retreat and look for employment elsewhere. A mentorship program can prevent this by guiding new nurses via interpersonal relationships to navigate the steep learning curve and sustainably grow their careers.

How Does Nurse Mentorship Work?

Mentorship programs pair nurse mentees with nurse mentors. Together, they discuss the mentee’s career goals and current challenges and develop an action plan to address them. The relationship typically lasts about one year and may be broken down into phases to ensure milestones are met.

There are multiple formats for mentorship, including group mentorship and digital formats. Nurse mentorship programs online — like the ANA mentorship program — make mentorship readily available for any who need it. Virtual meetings are helpful for those with restrictive availability and can offer a higher pool of experienced nurse mentors.

Implementing your own mentorship program — one specific to your organization’s needs and goals — is often the best approach. Mentors and mentees typically are better able to develop productive relationships more quickly in a shared work environment. Familiarity between experiences and resources (such as continuing education courses or committees) can also benefit goal setting and monitoring.

Benefits of Nurse Mentorship Programs

New graduate nurses typically get three to six months of orientation when starting their first job. During this time, training takes place through either a nurse preceptorship or a nurse residency program. After the training period, the nurse is free to take care of patients without oversight.

The “honeymoon period” of being off orientation but still relatively inexperienced can be a nerve-wracking time for nurses. Without the support of nursing leadership and colleagues, new nurses may feel isolated or disengaged from their work. Silent suffering too often leads to turnover — as many as 17% of new graduate nurses leave nursing within the first year.

Healthcare organizations can reduce turnover by implementing ways to formally check in on nurses. Here’s a look at some of the more specific benefits of nursing mentorship programs for nurses and facilities.

How to Start a Nurse Mentorship Program: 5 Steps

Every organization sets up mentorship programs differently, so feel free to customize yours based on the nature of the individual nursing unit. Since mentorships can be just as beneficial for mid-level nurses as they are for new graduates, consider opening the program up to nurses with more than five years of experience who are looking to broaden their nursing skill set or tackle feelings of burnout.

Here are five steps for creating a mentorship program at your facility, and a customizable mentorship program template to help you get started:

1. Establish a Nurse Mentorship Task Force

Creating a departmental or unit-based task force to outline the needs and goals of your mentorship program is a crucial first step. The team must have clinical experience yet also understand what it’s like to be in a new graduate nurse’s shoes. As an added benefit, nurse-driven committees are also a good way to promote structural empowerment within the Magnet nursing model.

Task force considerations:

• Advertise to possible participants and select members who are motivated to help others and make the program a success.
• Adopt or create a curriculum with resources to help guide mentors.
• Develop or utilize a nursing mentorship program template, to guarantee a consistent approach and to standardize the process.

2. Set Actionable Goals for the Program

Setting goals early with your nurse mentorship program will help ensure the meetings are effective from the start, leaving less guesswork for mentors. It’s also important that goals include actionable outcomes so that assessment of progress is easier to recognize and discuss.

Actional goal considerations:

• Implement standardized unit goals alongside individual, nurse-specific, SMART goals.
• Address unit priorities such as clinical skills proficiency and improved time management.
• Identify opportunities for career growth, such as a nurse certification achievement.

3. Create a Standardized Matching System

Standardizing the approach to matching prospective mentees with mentors will keep the process from becoming overly complicated while optimizing future relationships. Use of a tool (such as a quiz or question-and-answer sheet) to establish mentee strengths, weaknesses, or cultural requirements may help streamline the process.

Matching system considerations:

• Use a standard tool to identify future mentee needs.
• Incorporate schedule availability and preferred meeting times as part of the selection process to avoid scheduling conflicts later on.
• Allow mentors to select their own mentees based on the questionnaire or tool answers (as long as they’ve been made anonymous prior to selection).

4. Maintain a Timeline for Program Implementation

The mentorship program can be divided into phases such as pre-intervention, midpoint, and post-mentorship. This will help keep the program on track and avoid lulls that stagnate progress toward intended goals.

Timeline and implementation considerations:

• Establish a set timeline and divide it into phases to clarify program expectations.
• Tailor meeting times and content to suit the phases as they occur.
• Create a series of check-ins (via email, for example) so that mentors can keep nurse leaders aware of progress within the timeline and address any momentum issues.

5. Measure Success and Take Corrective Action

All project rollouts have learning curves, which is why it’s wise to collect data — good and bad — before and after the program. This data allows task force members to make informed changes to improve future mentorship programs.

Success and corrective action considerations:

• Track goal progress and identify patterns in early achievements or delays.
• Conduct routine surveys and act on feedback to improve program methods and delivery.
• Celebrate all the wins and look for ways to reinforce how much your facility values its nursing staff.

Find More Ways to Promote Nurse Retention

Establishing a nurse mentorship program is only one method of improving nursing morale and satisfaction. For more ideas, IntelyCare offers dozens of free, expert-written tips and insights to help your facility stand out from the rest.