Continuing Education for Mentors and a Mentoring Program for RN-to-BSN Students

Area of Science:

• Nursing Education
• Professional Development
• Healthcare Workforce

Background:

• Mentoring is established for nursing students and new nurses, but less documented for RN-to-BSN programs.
• Low graduation rates in public RN-to-BSN programs necessitate innovative support strategies.
• The Montana Center to Advance Health Through Nursing addressed this gap by designing a specific mentoring initiative.

Purpose of the Study:

• To implement and evaluate a mentoring program for RN students in a BSN program.
• To develop and deliver a continuing education workshop for experienced nurses on mentoring skills.
• To address challenges and improve graduation rates within RN-to-BSN programs.

Main Methods:

• A voluntary mentoring program paired six RN students with mentors in a BSN program.
• An interactive continuing education workshop was created to train mentors.
• The workshop was delivered nine times across Montana to 156 participants.

Main Results:

• Workshop evaluations were consistently positive, indicating high participant satisfaction.
• Participants identified time constraints and personality differences as key mentoring barriers.
• A strong recommendation for a distance-learning format to increase accessibility was noted.

Conclusions:

• The mentoring program shows promise for supporting RN-to-BSN students.
• Training workshops are effective but require adaptation for broader reach.
• Addressing practical barriers is crucial for optimizing mentoring program success in nursing education.