From the perspective of new nurses: what do effective mentors look like in practice?

New nurses entering practice experience a challenging transition, one that can be moderated by the presence of mentors in the practice setting. Seeking mentors who enter into informal mentoring relationships with new nurses can be difficult for those new nurses who don't know what to look for in a mentor. In this Grounded Theory study, the author explored nurses' perspectives on what makes a mentor effective, and how they engaged in mentoring relationships with their informal mentors. Two key factors in the development of these mentoring relationships was 1) the relational connection that existed between new nurses and one of their more experienced colleagues in the practice setting, and 2) the perception of new nurses of the quality of the experienced nurses' practices. New nurses entered practice expecting to learn from their more experienced colleagues but recognized that they wanted to emulate the practice of experienced nurses who practiced nursing in the way new nurses idealized. In this article, the author describes the characteristics of effective mentors, from the perspectives of nurses who had mentors, and described their processes of engaging with their mentors.