Mentorship relations among academician nurses in Turkey: an assessment from the viewpoints of mentors and mentees

The research was conducted with a descriptive and comparative design to determine how academic nurses (instructors-research assistants) perceive the mentorship relations among themselves. The research was carried out in 10 schools of nursing that offer graduate level education in Turkey, and the data were collected from those academics who are employed in these institutions and who agreed to participate in the research. The data are composed of personal information forms and mentorship scales filled out by 238 academic nurses. The collected data were assessed using SPSS 11.5 software to run percentage and frequency distribution, Cronbach's Alpha analysis, ANOVA, t-test, Kruskal Wallis, Mann Whitney U and--for advanced analysis--Tukey HSD tests. This research determined that mentors and mentees consider the relationship between themselves as mostly a teacher-student relationship, they experience lack of interaction due to shortness of time, mentors tend to evaluate themselves more positively and mentees at the master's level evaluate mentors more positively. In addition, while mentees evaluated assistant professor mentors more positively, assistant professor mentors constituted the group that evaluated itself in the most negative manner. Moreover, mentors with higher academic experiences evaluated themselves more positively.