Exploring mentorship programs and components in nursing academia: A qualitative study

Abstract

Objective: Nursing education institutions globally have issued calls for mentorship to address the nursing faculty shortage; however, little is known about the current state of mentorship for faculty members in Canadian schools of nursing. The purpose of this study is to describe the current state of mentorship in Canadian schools of nursing and explore definitions and goals of mentorship programs, mentorship models and components, and mentorship evaluation.Methods: A qualitative descriptive study was conducted. Within the Canadian Association of Schools of Nursing there are 81 English-speaking schools of nursing and 2,284 permanent faculty members spread over four regions. Participants were recruited from the 81 schools of nursing through the CASN newsletter list serve and publically accessible email addresses. Inclusion was limited to English speaking faculty. Purposive sampling aimed to capture variation across rank and tenure, school, size and areas within Canada. Semi-structured interviews were utilized to explore the participant’s (n = 48) perspectives and involvement with mentorship. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. NVivo was used to code and analyze the data for significant statements and phrases, which were organized into themes and sub-themes.Results: Mentorship remains largely informal in nursing academia without common definitions or goals. Current mentorship in nursing academia employed dyad, peer, group, constellation, and distance mentorship models. Common mentorship program components included guidelines, training, professional development workshops, purposeful linking of mentors and mentees, and mentorship coordinators. Evaluation of mentorship in nursing academia, where it exists, remains mostly descriptive, anecdotal, and lacks common evaluative metrics.Conclusions: Our results confirm mentorship in Canadian schools of nursing remains largely informal. In developing mentorship programs, academic leaders need to consider the mentorship models and components to meet their specific needs. Further rigorous evaluation of mentorship programs and components is needed to identify if mentorship programs are achieving specified goals.

Mentoring New and Early-Stage Investigators and Underrepresented Minority Faculty for Research Success in Health-Related Fields: An Integrative Literature Review (2010–2020)

“…We noted that numerous types of mentor–mentee matching strategies were used including dyads, peers, groups, constellations or groups, and telementoring. Prior researchers [ 27 , 89 , 90 ] have categorized formal mentoring similarly.…”

“…Further examining how underrepresented groups may differ from one another in mentoring needs should also be considered. Thirdly, little research has been conducted to test the effectiveness of different types of mentoring (e.g., dyads, groups, peers, and telementoring) [ 89 ]. Fourth, we need to expand the types of studies conducted beyond descriptive, cross-sectional and qualitative, to include more longitudinal, prospective and experimental/intervention designs [ 56 , 82 ].…”

“…Literature reviews by Doyle et al [ 54 ] and Pfund et al [ 72 ] expressed the need for continuing to advance the theoretical framework for mentoring in the academy. As a seventh direction for future research, there is a need to standardize mentoring terminology and evaluation methods [ 54 , 72 , 74 , 89 ] and continue to examine the most important variables (e.g., mediators) for enhancing mentoring. For example, Thorpe et al [ 83 ] emphasized that there is a strong relationship between academic self-efficacy (i.e., grant writing self-efficacy) and academic success [ 47 ], but additional research is needed.…”

“…Although two reviews on assessing mentoring success have been published [ 101 , 102 ] it is clear that more research is needed to discern which questionnaires, surveys, interview questions, or other strategies should be used to assess the success of specific parts of mentoring programs (e.g., mentor and mentee success and program success). An eighth recommendation is to examine not only the benefits, barriers and facilitators of mentorship for mentees, but also appropriate content and strategies for training mentors [ 89 ], and how that relates to program success. A ninth recommendation for future study is to continue to examine how to pair mentors and mentees for research success, as was discussed in Huggett et al, [ 93 ] and Huskins et al [ 103 ].…”

The space to make mistakes: allocating responsibility and accountability for nursing student-committed medication errors

“…For instructors, the informal mentorship that had developed over time at these schools was clearly viewed as valuable, informative and supportive to those who needed to make decisions about student-committed medication errors. The value of this type of mentorship was explicated by Nowell, White, Benzies, and Rosenau (2017); they explained that informal mentorship often develops more naturally because it involves a relationship between two like-minded individuals who often share a similar teaching philosophy or teaching approach. The lack of prescriptive policies and procedures at these educational institutions made colleague-to-colleague and colleague-toadministrator consultations particularly necessary so that instructors could have higher confidence that they were not missing requirements and that they would have support in their decision-making.…”