New Nursing Faculty Perspectives on and Experiences with Group Mentoring

Nursing faculty are needed to teach the next generation of nurses. However, there is a current shortage of nursing faculty. The transition to nursing education from clinical practice is a difficult one, which has led many to leave education to return to nursing practice instead of successfully transitioning to the nurse educator role. Strategies are needed to support nurses in making the transition from practice to education. Mentoring has shown promise in aiding this transition. Many studies explored mentoring of new nursing faculty, but few studied group mentoring with this population. Limited research showed that group mentoring might have benefits over one-on-one mentoring. The purpose of this study was to explore the perspectives and experiences of new nursing faculty who have participated in group mentoring. The following research questions guided this study: Q1 What are the perspectives and experiences of new faculty participating in group mentoring? Q1a What are the structure and characteristics of group mentoring for novice nursing faculty? Q1b What challenges and barriers of group mentoring are identified by novice nursing faculty? Q1c What are the perceived benefits of group mentoring identified by novice nursing faculty? Q1d How do the experiences of one-on-one mentoring and group mentoring compare? Q1e What is the effect of group mentoring on the role transition from expert clinician to novice nurse educator? Ten participants were interviewed who had less than four years of experience teaching full-time nursing at any combination of associate’s, bachelor’s, or graduate level degrees. An interpretive description qualitative design was used to explore participants’ perspectives and experiences with group mentoring. The following four themes arose: an organic process, a safe space, community and camaraderie, and growing into the role. Participants were strongly in favor of quality group mentoring for new faculty as a way to offer support as nurses transitioned into the nurse educator role. Institutions should consider implementing group mentoring that aligns with the study themes. Future studies should further explore group mentoring of new nursing faculty.