The Clinical Nurse Educator Mentorship Support Model

Abstract

Because the nursing shortage is a present and looming issue to health care and nursing practice, organizations and researchers have invested a great deal of time and resources looking into ways to rectify this situation. Mentorship is one strategy gaining steady interest as a possible way to lessen the impact of this problem. Though much is known anecdotally about mentorship, empirical research is limited. Formal mentoring program evaluation and nursing graduates’ experiences of transitioning into practice have been studied the most. This Grounded Theory study, in an attempt to explore new dimensions in mentorship research, examined the role of the Clinical Nurse Educator in shaping an organizational culture of mentorship. This study is important because it looks beyond the mentoring relationships that exist between the experienced and less experienced nurse toward understanding the processes and influences exterior to this relationship, namely, nursing leadership and organizational culture for example, the Clinical Nurses Educator’s involvement in mentorship with colleagues and their participation in mentoring programs within the Health Region. The researcher interviewed Clinical Nurse Educators in acute care settings to determine their role in shaping a mentoring culture. The findings indicated a flourishing use of informal mentorship between Clinical Nurse Educators, staff nurses, and fellow educator colleagues. From the data, a theoretical model was developed to explain the Clinical Nurse Educator’s role of supporting a mentoring culture. Five themes of perceived nursing environment, work functions, mentorship beliefs, relationships, and organizational values were found to influence the Clinical Nurses Educator’s ability to support mentorship. Also uncovered were the personal and professional mechanisms of informal mentorship that Clinical Nurse Educators used to support an organizational culture of mentorship on their units. Understanding the Clinical Nurse Educator’s role in supporting an organizational culture of mentorship will create awareness of those mechanisms currently in place, inform organizations about ways to strengthen mentorship in the workplace, emphasize the need to support mentorship in the acute care setting, add to the empirical nursing literature on mentorship, and highlight new areas for mentoring research.