The first two years of employment within an organization are identified as a crucial period for establishing oneself in practice, becoming part of an organization, and continuing employment. Use of mentoring programs in nursing has led to higher reported satisfaction, with increased retention rates. Globally, there is a gap between the supply of healthcare professionals and demand for these services. Nationally, there is also a shortage of healthcare professionals, while it is projected that the elderly population will experience the largest growth inthe next eight years, further exacerbating the workforce shortage. Currently, there is a lack of mentoring programs for nurses in a psychiatric hospital located in North Texas. This facility had experienced tremendous nursing staff turnover. Implementation of a pilot mentoring program for nurses employed at the hospital was undertaken to address the high nursing turnover rate. The objective of this project was to improve job satisfaction and increase a sense of community and belonging amongst nurses by way of a mentoring program. The Model for Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) Change framework was used to guide this capstone project of incorporating a mentoring program amongst nurses employed at the psychiatric hospital. Theoretical models used in this project included Lewins’ Stages of Planned Change, Herzberg’s Theory of Motivation, the Learner-Centered Mentoring Model and Knowles Adult Learning Principles. A mentoring toolkit was used to initiate the mentoring program at the hospital. the mentoring program took place over eight weeks, using three teams of mentor-mentees. Job satisfaction scores did improve, but not by more than 50%as projected. Qualitative evaluations revealed that participants desired the mentoring program to continue. All mentees recommended their mentor as future mentors. One participant expressed interest in leading the mentoring program past the project. Future mentoring will incorporate more participants and will occur over a timeframe of six months to one year. The literature suggests mentoring is a cost effective way to retain new and seasoned nurses; high quality mentoring can be effective in organizations that are time and resource limited. Research shows that mentoring is a support structure for nursing personnel and can function as a means to increase nurse job satisfaction. While the retention of nurses was beyond the scope of this pilot, there was statistically reliable improvement in nurse job satisfaction after implementing this mentoring program. Several tools utilized in this project can be broadly applied in nurse mentoring to quantify outcomes. This project could help to reduce nurse turnover rates in the psychiatric hospital by improving job satisfaction.
