Impact of a Formal Mentorship Program on Frontline Nurse Managers

OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this research was to examine how a formal nurse manager mentorship program (FNMMP) impacts the intent to stay and job satisfaction of hospital nurse managers.

METHODOLOGY
The sample was 15 nurse managers in a hospital setting employed at one of two hospitals in the Northwest, who voluntary enrolled in a mentorship program (FNMMP), comprised of six sessions over six months. They completed the Leadership Practices Inventory and the Nurse Manager Practice Environment Scale (NMPES; Warshawsky, Wiggens, & Rayens, 2016) of which three scales assessed job satisfaction and three scales measured intention to leave. Nearly half (47%) of the participants had 12- 16 years of nursing experience and 60 percent held a BSN as the highest degree obtained. Fifty percent had two years or less of managerial experience, 66.7 percent were in their position for two years or less and 86.7 percent did not have experience being a manager outside of the hospital system.

KEY FINDINGS
A paired-samples t-test was conducted to compare the nurse managers LPI scores prior to participating in the FNMMP and after participating in the FNMMP, and statistically significant improvement in the overall LPI score was found (p = .013). The author concludes: “This demonstrates increase in leadership competency and transformational leadership behaviors over the course of the FNMMP” (p. 41).

The author notes: “Mentoring in nursing has long been identified as a way to retain nurses and recently there is a growing body of evidence that mentorship for nurse managers is equally important (Vitale, 2018). The project used an evidence based approach to facilitate mentorship relationships using the Exemplary Leadership framework described by Kouzes and Posner (Kouzes and Posner, 2017). Pedaline et al. (2012) described using this framework to guide mentorship activities in a group setting. In addition, Gooch (2017) also described using this framework to guide mentorship with new and seasoned chief nurse executives. The evidence supported the use of this framework and was easy for the nurse managers participating to understand the components of transformational leadership. The LPI self is a well-tested instrument that has demonstrated with great reliability the presence of the five practices of Exemplary Leadership (Statistic Solutions, 2017). Using a reliable tool that can assess pre and post mentoring behaviors provides nurse managers with tangible results. In addition, this tool was instrumental in identifying mentorship strengths amongst the participants” (pp. 50-51).