Graduate nurses' evaluation of mentorship: Development of a new tool

Develop and test an instrument to measure graduate-nurses' perceptions of a structured mentorship program.

New graduate nurses may experience difficulties in the transition from student to practitioner. Mentoring is commonly used to support graduates. However, there is a lack of published tools measuring graduate nurses' perceptions of mentorship. As mentoring is resource intensive, development and testing of a validated tool are important to assist in determining program effectiveness.

A pretest-posttest interventional design was used. Following a critical review of literature and content experts' input, the 10-item National University Hospital Mentorship Evaluation (NUH ME) instrument was tested with a convenience sample of 83 graduate nurses. Psychometric tests included internal reliability, stability, content validity, and factor analysis. Changed scores were evaluated using paired samples t-test.

Seventy-three graduates (88%) out of a possible 83 completed the pre-and post-program survey. Internal reliability was excellent with a Cronbach's alpha of 0.92. Test-retest reliability was stable over time (ICC=0.81). Exploratory factor analysis supported a 1-factor solution explaining 58.2% of variance. Paired samples t-test showed statistical significance between the pre- and post-program scores (p<0.001).

The NUH-ME measure was found to be valid and reliable. Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the tool with different groups of nursing graduates is required. Mentorship programs can be an effective recruitment and retention strategy, but are also resource intensive. Measuring new graduates' perceptions of mentoring contributes to program relevance in addressing their personal, professional and clinical skill development needs. As mentoring engages a diverse range of mentors, feedback through measurement may also positively alter organizational learning culture.