Date of Award
2018
Document Type
Capstone
Degree Name
Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)
Committee Chair
Cindy Miller
Abstract
The purpose of this project was to develop a transformative mentorship program for clinical nurse educators. Jean Watson’s Theory of Human Caring (THC) was used as the theoretical framework for the development of this program. The population for this evidenced-based project was 12 clinical nurse educators who work in a private baccalaureate liberal arts college. These educators provide supervision for students in the hospital as well as community clinical practice settings. This evidence-based project examined if the implementation of a mentorship program would help increase the confidence level of the clinical educator. The project was implemented over a three-month period with the delivery of power points through the college’s platform to the clinical educators. The topics presented within the power points included commonly encountered challenges faced by clinical educators and strategies for solutions to these challenges. Opportunities were provided throughout the three-month period for debriefing regarding any questions or comments related to the topics presented in the power points. The Confidence Scale (C-scale) developed by Susan Grundy was administered to the clinical educators as a pre-test prior to the mentorship program and as a post-test following completion of the program. The scale was used to determine if the educator’s confidence increased. The Wilcoxon signed ranks test was used to determine if there was a significant difference in C-Scale item scores before and after participation in the mentorship program. Two of the five C-Scale items were significant at the .05 level of significance. There was sufficient evidence to support an increase in confidence level in performance and satisfaction with performance post-implementation. Post implementation data collection also consisted of Evaluation of the Mentorship Program to provide additional data regarding the value of the mentorship program. All participants felt that the program was effective and provided them with opportunities to examine challenges of the clinical nurse educator role. Experienced nurse educators have a responsibility to mentor future educators as they transition from clinicians to the role of a nurse educator. Effective clinical nurse educators facilitate quality clinical practice for nursing students, which is a priority in the nursing profession. The practice of effective nurses for the future is mainly dependent upon the present practices of role modeling observed by students in the clinical setting (Cunze, 2016). A mentorship program that uses experienced nurse educators who value qualities of transformative mentoring provides a solution to help in the successful growth and retention of nursing faculty.
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Citation Information
Beaman, Sue J., "Rescue the Clinical Nurse Educator with a Transformative Mentorship Program" (2018). Nursing Theses and Capstone Projects. 306.
https://digitalcommons.gardner-webb.edu/nursing_etd/306