Alisa Glaister, RN, credits her opportunity to ascend from new grad to nurse manager to a few key colleagues, including a director from a different unit who advised her as she led a project to treat angioplasty patients on the telemetry floor. “He helped me get my foot in the door for this project, which I believe has led to my current management position,” said Glaister, a nurse manager at St. Mary’s Medical Center in San Francisco.

Glaister met with her mentor weekly to discuss techniques of effective leadership. “He was a tremendous help and guide,” she said.

Mentoring has gained considerable respect as an essential element for training new nurses, whether they’re fresh out of school or recently transferred from another unit. “The first year [out of school] you have those vulnerable moments all the time, and you forget what you have accomplished,” said Hazel Curtis, RN, BSN, MPH, an education specialist for staff development at Loma Linda (Calif.) University Medical Center. “A great mentor picks you up, dusts you off, gives you a pat on the back and says, ‘You can do it.’”

Going one on one
Formal mentoring programs hatched in professional associations and hospitals are popping up around the country as researchers and managers find the practice boosts a nurse’s job satisfaction and confidence.

Cecelia Gatson Grindel, RN, PhD, CMSRN, FAAN, studied the outcomes of Nurses Nurturing Nurses (N3), a mentoring program designed by the Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurses. The year-long program was rolled out to 40 medical institutions across the country in 2002. Grindel, a professor and interim dean at Georgia State University in Atlanta, said data she could gather indicated more than 90% of mentored nurses stayed on the job, compared to attrition rates as high as 30%. Feedback collected throughout the pilot year of the program suggested mentored nurses had more job satisfaction and confidence.

Yvonne Brookes, RN, director of clinical learning at Baptist Health South Florida in Miami, found similar results after implementing a residency program that included a mentorship component. Previously, turnover among the system’s 4,000 nurses averaged 22%, often because new graduates left the profession or pursued an advanced degree after their first year. Since implementing the program in 2007, the new graduate turnover rate dropped to 6%, she said.

“We realized it wasn’t about the science, it was all that other stuff that goes to the head of a new grad,” she said.

“Other stuff” can range from implementing unit procedure to dealing with difficult managers or unhelpful preceptors. It can be conflict with patients or their families dealing with the shock of witnessing a death for the first time. “Sometimes you just need to vent,” Brookes said.

A mentor also can help a nurse recover from making a medical error — a potentially traumatic experience — by offering emotional support and emphasizing that one mistake doesn’t make a bad nurse.

More.

A study was published this week in Annals of Internal Medicine on the effects of peer mentoring.

Researchers analyzed the blood glucose control of 120 African-American patients struggling with diabetes. The researchers chose these patients because African-Americans tend to be affected more frequently and have more severe complications than other groups from diabetes, a condition that can be mitigated by changes in diet and exercise.

The patients were randomly divided into three groups. Those in one group saw their doctors and received the usual care; those in another group were offered up to $200 if they could improve their glucose control over time; and individuals in the third group were assigned a peer mentor, a fellow patient who had also struggled with but eventually managed to control his diabetes.

Peer mentors were encouraged, but not required, to phone their assigned mentee once a week.

After six months, the only group of patients who had significantly improved their blood sugar control was the group with peer mentors. Those who were promised a financial reward showed only slight improvements, and those who simply saw their doctors regularly did not improve at all.

“People who were struggling with their diabetes managed to create a partnership with those who had faced the same issues but managed to do well,” said Dr. Judith A. Long, lead author and a staff physician and faculty member at the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion.

While work done by the mentors in this study seems similar to that performed by community health workers, carrying out this peer mentor program was far less complex and time-consuming. During an hourlong one-on-one training session with a research assistant, the mentors learned some motivational techniques, like asking open-ended questions and identifying realistic goals. But mostly, they were encouraged to draw on their own history.

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