Promoting and Supporting a Doctor of Nursing Practice Program of Scholarship

Mentoring in the context of the faculty-student relationship can be one in which each benefits. Creative approaches are warranted to help discriminate the boundaries between the student and the teacher as a mentor, which are often ill-defined and blurred given the high-stakes summative assessments of performance.

Six specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-based (SMART) goals were established for a mentor and mentee relationship spanning a 2-year period based on a vision for building a program of scholarship. Weekly mentoring sessions were used to monitor progress toward goal attainment.

While completing the Doctor of Nursing Practice program, the mentee expanded professional networks, obtained funded fellowships, expanded knowledge and skills related to the substantive area of scholarship, and disseminated that work through professional presentations and publications coauthored with the mentor.

Cognizant of the boundaries between course-related products and professional presentations and publications, the goal-driven mentor-mentee relationship is transformational to both. [J Nurs Educ. 2020;59(9):526-530.].