Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship

Section 4: Findings and Recommendations

Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship

Introduction

A gap in nursing knowledge was identified on the mentorship that nurses acquire in their working environment at the local health care organization. The purpose of this DNP project was to determine whether an increase in nurse awareness on mentorship in LTC would result in a decrease in the population of nurses who will be required to mobilize the staff mentorship. The practice focused question of the DNP aimed to determine to what degree the staff educational program set on best practices increase nursing awareness on mentorship and enhance their comfort level in mentorship. The DNP utilized the staff educational intervention to introduce evidence-based practices on increasing nursing awareness on mentorship in LTC and enhance the opportunities for nursing mentorship in clinical environment.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

The impact of the staff educational intervention was determined through a pre-and-post design framework that assessed nurse awareness on mentorship opportunities before the staff education program, and nurse awareness on mentorship in LTC after the staff educational program. Convenience sampling was used to select 27 participants who were seasoned mentor nurses(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship). The data was collected through a survey and analyzed through descriptive analysis. Comparison was made between the pre-survey data and post-survey data leading to key findings on the impact of the staff education intervention on nursing awareness on mentorship. The chapter also discussed these key findings, implications, and outcome recommendations as well as the strengths and limitations of the project. Further, the chapter also included a discussion on the contribution of the doctoral project team in guiding the DNP.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

Findings and Implications

The purpose of the DNP was to determine whether the staff educational program set on best practices would increase mentorship in long-term care environment by increasing nursing awareness on mentorship and enhancing their comfort level in mentorship. The project aimed at establishing the impact of role empowerment by mentors by improving the effectiveness of the unit’s mentorship program (Nelson et al., 2018). Using the pre-and-post survey framework, the DNP examined the impact the educational intervention had on different components of nursing mentorship such as ability to disseminate mentoring outcomes to mentees. The design utilized a control groups and with one of the groups preset without any control, and this was used to try to evaluate the effectiveness nursing mentorship by using the random sampling method of filling in the questionnaire form. The goal of the DNP was to increase the effectiveness of the nursing mentorship program by increasing nurse awareness on mentorship thus reducing the number of nurses required to mobilize staff mentorship. The successful completion of the DNP was based on outcomes of improved nurse awareness determined through the examination of the findings and implications of the educational intervention.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

Project Outcome: Study findings, Implications, and Future Recommendations

Background

The whole process of mentorship is a critical component in developing the nursing staff, and improve the competence and capacity of nurses to deliver quality care. The efficacy of mentorship programs is determined by nursing mentorship skills and nursing awareness, which improve the capacity of the nurse mentor and mentee to interact in a beneficial and significant manner(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship). Therefore, optimizing and mobilizing mentorship through a best practice staff educational intervention can be utilized to improve and promote the mentorship awareness of nursing. The effectiveness was regarded to be attainable at a time when the mentor was available to enact his or her role in the way that positively influences a mentee and the mentee is aware of the role of the mentor in developing competence, skill, or knowledge in practice (Rosenzweig, et al., 2019).(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

Through the DNP, it was evident that nursing mentorship awareness played a vital role in determining the effectiveness of mentorship and its long-term effect.  Nursing awareness was proven beneficial to both the mentees and the mentor. In the hospital, some officials were given the mandate of nursing mentorship; they included advisor, supporter, and supervisor. The role of the mentor in supervising was adjusted with the competencies together with the skills. A mentor led a team of mentees, and was selected based on the skills and his or her ability to direct, guide, and to provide and be the role model to the new nurses.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

The competency of the mentor was essential for the better supervision of the mentee. However, there were significant barriers to effective mentorship as the mentors lacked support and resources to facilitate the development of mentorship skills and enhancement of mentorship competencies. A study was conducted on mentors and it was found that only few of them had the necessary mentoring skills having attended mentoring courses. On the other hand, a significant number of the mentors never had the essential skills of mentorship, having not participated in the mentoring session(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship). Secondly, the mentors lacked proper and substandard experience and had a challenging time at workplaces, as they felt discouraged by their inability to deliver as expected. Besides, most found the mentoring process to be tedious and marred a myriad of challenges including poor exposure in the nursing field among other nurse-oriented issues such as burnouts. These factors indicate that is imperative to improve nursing awareness on mentorship in the clinical environment to facilitate effective and practical mentorship to all of the nurses to spearhead quality improvement and enhance competence with the nursing continuum. The staff educational module was created to address this need and help address all the underlying issues impeding nursing mentorship in the clinical environment.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

The DNP obtained ethical clearance from the institution’s Ethical Committee department of Nursing. The responses and the activities in the proposal were supposed to be performed by the authors and respondents of the proposal by providing information on the research stages included in it. The authors were supposed to go by the principles of the ethics of the research at a time they were conducting the DNP. The DNP involved getting the participant’s opinion before and after the study. The participants were allowed to raise and ask any question that was of importance to the study theory. The participants also had a right to refuse to be involved in the study either by refusing to answer the raised questions or to be involved in any other way. Participants were also ensured that their confidentiality was to be covered in a way that the data collected could not be accessed by either any of the participants nor the author of the proposal.  The participants were also given equal chances of observation, the process of filling out the questionnaires together with the process of empowerment intervention(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship). The nurse manager, head nurse, and the author of the study worked together to help provide chances to the participants of the survey so that they can all attend and have equal opportunities in the activities of mentoring without any complicated inconveniences. The vital information gained from this study was a significant improvement of competencies of mentors’ in the process of mentoring. This helped them to give excellent mentoring skills to the mentees.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

The relevance of Data to the Practice Problem

  The DNP student developed a mentorship program that is specific to the needs of the organization. The problem of project was aligned with the practice-focused question regarding implementing an evidence-based educational program on mentorship for long-term care nurses at the practicum site (ANCC, 2014; Stevens, 2013). This evidence-based educational program on mentorship for senior nurse mentors was an effort to increase their mentoring awareness and comfort level at this long-term care facility and therefore aligns with the gap in practice of mentoring skills. (ANCC, 2014; Stevens, 2013). This mentorship program allowed expert nurses to improve their mentorship skills needed to mentor and provide guidance to new nurses as they began their nursing careers in a long-term care facility. Evidence generated for this project was data that was collected and would provide the pre-survey results that were used to help guide the education development and the post-survey results would be used to evaluate learning and the effectiveness of the education. Objectives for the educational program were developed from a review of the literature and the evidence in the literature was used to formulate the education module.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

The data was extracted from the pre and post-test results of the educational program. By analyzing responses to the questionnaires, this was able to identify trends and themes that contributed to senior nurse’s awareness and measured their comfort level in mentorship, which allowed the program to evolve into an evidence-based project specific to this organization. Each senior nurse who was employed in the organization was asked to complete a demographic data and pre and post-test survey for the educational mentorship program.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

 The organization’s IRB permitted the sharing of de-identified data specific to the development of the experienced nurse mentorship program(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship). Approval for the project was obtained from the Walden University’s IRB the application included a request for the nurse demographic data, and pre/posttest surveys would collect for an educational project to evaluate the improvement of nursing awareness and measure their comfort level of LTC mentors. The DNP student utilized the project made demographic data pre/ post-intervention questionnaire to answer the project questions and to deliver, evaluate the improvement of awareness and measure comfort level among LTC mentors. A human resource representative provided the approved demographic data and was available for clarification of the results(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

Descriptive Data

The study used on the project was an approach that involved a pre- and post-survey. The researcher selected 27 respondents as the participants of the study. The sample of 27 was used in the pre-intervention and post-intervention surveys. The participants were selected through a convenience sample, which included nurses with more than three years’ experience, and with any additional mentorship training. . The Excel data analysis tool was used to calculate the change in nurse awareness in mentorship in the pre-intervention and post-intervention data groups. The following table below explained their distributions according to their demographic profile.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

Table 1

Demographic Profile of Participants Role

Role	Frequency	Percentage
Seasoned Mentor Nurses	27	100%
Total	27	100%

In terms of the role, the participants of the study were all seasoned mentor nurses.

Table 2

Gender

Gender	Frequency	Percentage
Male	4	14.80%
Female	23	85.20%
Total	27	100.00%

In general, there were only 4 male seasoned mentor nurses and 23 female seasoned mentor nurses.

Table 3

Age

Age	Frequency	Percentage
18-22	0	0
23-27	0	0
28-32	4	14.80%
33-37	2	7.42%
38-above	21	77.78%
Total	27	100%

In terms of age, most of participants were belonged to ages 38 and above which comprised 77.78% of the respondents as a whole. While ages 28-32 comprised of 14.80% of the total percentage of the respondents and the least were at ages 33-37 years old with 7.42% of the total sample size of the respondents.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

Table 4

Civil Status

Civil Status	Frequency	Percentage
Single	4	14.80%
Married	23	85.20%
Total	27	100%

In terms of civil status, most of the participants were married with 85.20% of the total percentage of the respondents while single seasoned mentor nurses only comprise 14.80% of the total percentage of the respondents.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

Table 5

Educational Level

Education	Frequency	Percentage
Associate Degree	2	7.41%
Bachelor Degree	24	88.89%
Master’s Degree	1	3.70%
Doctorate Degree	0	0%
Others	0	0%
Total	27	100%

In terms of education, most of the participants had a bachelors’ degree with 88.89% of the total percentage of the respondents while those who had an associate degree comprise 7.41% of the total percentage of the respondents and those who with a master’s degree only comprise of 3.70%.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

Table 6

Ethnicity

Ethnicity	Frequency	Percentage
Asian	18	66.70%
Black/African- American	3	11.10%
White	3	11.10%
Hispanic	3	11.10%
Total	27	100.00%

In terms of ethnicity, Asian were the dominant among 27 selected seasoned mentor nurses with 66.70% of the total percentage of the respondents.  While the Black/ African-American, White and Hispanic were comprised of 11.10% each of the total percentage of the respondents.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

Table 7

Years of Experience

Years of Experience	Frequency	Percentage
1-3 years	0
4-6 years	6	22.22%
7-9 years	17	62.96%
10years and above	4	14.81%
Total	27	100.00%

In terms of experience as the seasoned mentor nurses, most of the respondents were on it’s exactly 7-9 years of experience with 62.96% of the total percentage of respondents while 6 of them are on 4-6 years of experience and 4 of them are on 10 years and above of experience.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

Responses to Pre- and Post-Survey questionnaires (See Appendix B)

Pre-Survey Questionnaire

Pre-SQ1: Yes= 17, No= 10

Pre- SQ2: Advanced=0, Above Average=18, Average=7, Needs improvement=2

Pre- SQ3: Completely=19, Partially=8, Non-Existent=0

Table 8 Pre- and Post-Survey questionnaires 4 to 9

Pre- SQ4: Results for Pre-survey question 4		Total	Percentage
Able to use various tools to obtain mentoring		9	33%
Able to guide the mentees to develop self-reflective practice		14	52%
Confident in the ability to mentor new nurses		4	15%
Seek opportunities to stay current in nursing knowledge		0	0%
Actively seek opportunities to improve mentorship knowledge		0	0%
Pre-SQ5: Results for Pre-survey question 5
Demonstrate advanced clinical skills and judgment		6	22%
Able to answer questions from the mentees reflecting in depth understanding of the field		8	30%
Able to prepare new nurses for practice in the contemporary health care environment		3	11%
Support evidence based practices		9	33%
Facilitate best practices that is person family and community centered		1	4%
Pre-SQ6: Results for Pre-survey question 6
Provide timely and constructive feedback to mentees		5	19%
Viewed as an approachable mentor		10	37%
Respect and value mentors’ different mentoring styles		1	4%
Interested in the progress welfare of mentees		7	26%
Frequently provide support and encouragement to new nurses		4	15%
Pre-SQ7: Results for Pre-survey question 7
Able to inspire excellence by articulating vision, integrity and courage		3	11%
A good mentor and a coach who supports and guides colleagues		9	33%
Motivate co-mentors and peers to achieve excellence		4	15%
Actively participates in strategies that facilitate positive change in profession		4	15%
Create and maintain networks and collaborations		7	26%
Pre-SQ8: Results for Pre-survey question 8
Contribute to the specialty of nursing education through the generation and discussion of new knowledge		20	74%
Recognize that mentoring is an important aspect of nursing practice		1	4%
Publishing research paper and presenting at conferences are important aspects of  nurse mentoring work		2	7%
Believe that mentoring is essential in acquisition of proper nurse knowledge		2	7%
Frequently read discipline relevant mentoring articles and reports		2	7%
	Pre-SQ9: Results for Pre-survey question 9
	Actively disseminate mentoring outcomes to mentees	7	26%
	Able to discern high and low quality of mentorship program	2	7%
	Creatively develop a mentoring program that will advance nursing knowledge	6	22%
	Conduct mentoring independently or collaboratively within groups	10	37%
	Identify areas where change is needed to build a mentoring program for nursing	2	7%

Table 10: Post-Survey Results

	Aware	Moderately Aware	Extremely Aware	No Response
Post-SQ1 To what degree does this mentoring enhance your professional contributions to Professional nursing? (Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)	6 (22.2%)	7 (25.9%)	14 (52%)	0
Post-SQ2 To what degree does this mentoring contribute to your personal satisfaction as a Professional nurse?	2 (7%)	10 (37%)	15 (55.6%)	0
Post-SQ3 To what degree have you been able to develop a supportive relationship with your Mentee.	3 (11.1%)	9 (33.3%)	15 (55.6%)	0
Post-SQ4 To what degree able to inspire excellence by articulating vision, integrity and courage after the mentorship program (Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)	3 (11.1%)	4 (14.8%)	19 (70.3%)	1 (3%)
Post-SQ5 To what degree do you think this mentoring Helps the nurse transition into the workplace? (Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)	3 (11.1%)	6 (22.2%)	17 (62.9%)	1 (3%)
Post-SQ6 Educating senior professional nurses on effective mentorship will improve nursing awareness, the training of new nurses, and verbalized how to be a good mentor at the end of mentorship program? (Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)	2 (7%)	2 (7%)	23 (85.2%)	0

Results and Analysis

The sample was composed of participants older than 28 years, with 77% being over 38 years. 85.2% of the pre-intervention group was female, while 14.8% were male. The DNP utilized the same sample in pre and post-intervention, making it effective to track changes across the group. All the 27 participants were senior nurses, with 88.8% having Bachelor’s degree, one master’s degree, and two associate degrees. 66.2% of the participants were Asian, with Hispanic, White, and Black participants being 11% each. 62.9% of the nurses had between 7 to 9 years of experience, while 22% had between 4 to 6 years of experience, and only 14% had over ten years of experience.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

In the pre-intervention survey, 63% of the participants noted that they had served as mentors before, with 37% having no experience as mentors(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship). The anticipated finding showed the extent of unutilized resources in the facility. On their ability to serve as mentors, 67% of participants responding to the pre-survey noted that they are above average, 26% rated themselves average, and 7% noted the need for improvement. Notably, none of the participants rated their mentoring ability as advanced. This anticipated finding highlighted the gap present in experience and resources to support mentorship programs. This finding also underscores the DNP’s rationale to improve mentoring ability by improving awareness and senior nurses’ comfort level to mentor newly graduated nurses.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

The pre-intervention survey also investigated how the mentors felt that they are meeting their mentees’ expectations. In this, 70% of participants noted that they could completely meet their mentees’ expectations, while 30% noted partially. This highlighted the importance of fully utilizing the mentorship programs, especially with their links to low turnover rates and high job satisfaction rates among newly graduated nurses.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

On investigating mentoring awareness and practice in the pre-intervention survey, only 33% of the participants were able to use various tools to obtain mentoring, 52% were able to guide the mentees to develop self-reflective practice, and 15% confident in the ability to mentor new nurses(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship). On the other hand, none of the participants was able to seek opportunities to stay current in nursing knowledge and actively seek opportunities to improve mentorship knowledge. These unanticipated findings underline the wide gap in knowledge and resources to support mentors and build their mentoring capacity. Staying current and actively seeking opportunities to learn, morphed as lifelong learning, is critical to improving the nursing continuum to meet patients’ changing needs. It is imperative to improve mentoring awareness and practice to optimize mentoring programs’ efficacy and realize their benefits to the care environment.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

On investigating the mentoring nursing awareness in the pre-intervention survey, only 22% demonstrated advanced clinical skills and judgment, 30% answered questions from mentees reflecting an in-depth understanding, and 11% prepared new nurses for practice. While clinical skills and judgment, answers showing in-depth understanding, and preparing new graduate nurses are fundamental knowledge and skill areas in mentorship, their lack thereof is an indicator of low nursing mentoring awareness. Furthermore, only 33% acknowledge supporting evidence-based practices, and only 4% facilitate best practices that are person, family, and community-centered. This highlights the need to develop frameworks that equip the mentoring nurses with resources and integrate the mentorship program with the use of EBP.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

On mentoring relationships, the pre-intervention survey investigated the provision of timely feedback, approachability, and respect for mentoring styles, progress welfare, support, and encouragement to new nurses. On feedback, only 19% of the participants provided timely and constructive feedback to mentees, 37% felt that they were viewed as approachable and only 4% of the mentors respected the styles used by other mentors(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship). As aforementioned earlier, mentoring relationships inside healthcare organizations could help these organizations retain nurses and nurse educators, reducing the cost of turnover (Breit, 2015). However, with the lack of timely and consistent feedback, a standard mentoring style, and approachability, it is challenging to attain a facility’s mentoring program’s benefits. Besides, only 26% are interested in mentees’ progress welfare, and only 15% frequently provide support and encouragement to new nurses. The low rates of engagement in mentoring relationships highlight the low utilization of mentorships as a path to improving the clinical environment and improving retention and turnover rates in the facility.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

Leadership is a critical component of mentorship relationships. The pre-survey investigated the multifaceted aspects of leadership and determined that only 11% of the participants can inspire excellence by articulating vision, integrity, and courage; 33% saw themselves as good mentors and a coach who supports and guides colleagues.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship) Only 15% actively motivate co-mentors and peers to achieve excellence. In investigating leadership qualities, the pre-intervention survey also showed that only 15% of the participants actively participate in strategies that facilitate positive change in the profession, and only 26% have created and maintained networks and collaborations. To realize the benefits of the multi-dimensional relationship between leadership and mentorship, it is essential to enhance mentors’ leadership competencies by guiding their understanding of their role in a mentorship relationship.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

On orientation to mentoring awareness, the pre-intervention survey showed that 74% of the nurses acknowledged that they contribute to nursing education through the generation and discussion of new knowledge. However, only 4% recognize that mentoring is an important aspect of nursing practice; only 7% believe that mentoring is essential in acquiring proper nurse knowledge, and 7% frequently read discipline-relevant mentoring articles and reports. Even though over 70% of the nurses contribute to the synthesis of new knowledge, a low number find mentoring important to practice or acquiring knowledge. The poor awareness levels are a barrier to the effective use of mentorship programs designed to nurture newly graduated nurses, lower turnover rates, and improve job satisfaction. Besides, only 7% of the participants have published research papers and presented at conferences on important nurse mentoring work aspects.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

In assessing mentoring action, the pre-intervention survey indicated that 26% of respondents actively disseminate mentoring outcomes to mentees, 7% can discern the high and low quality of mentorship programs, and only 7% can identify areas where change is needed to build a mentoring program for nursing. These unanticipated findings underline the gap in knowledge and skill mentoring action, especially in communicating with mentees and assessing mentoring programs. Furthermore, only 22% can creatively develop a mentoring program that will advance nursing knowledge, and only 37% can conduct mentoring independently or collaboratively within groups. The pre-intervention group’s findings called for further investigation into the understanding and awareness of mentors’ mentoring programs. The results also indicated the need to implement the staff educational intervention to build the participants’ capacity and competence in providing mentorship.

After the implementation of the intervention, the primary investigator surveyed the same participants. The findings indicated that 51% of the participants were had extreme awareness of the degree to which mentoring enhances professional contributions to professional nursing. Twenty-six percent were moderately aware, while 23% were aware. This indicated that all participants were now aware of the contributions of mentoring to practice, which is an improvement from the low awareness of mentoring noted in the pre-intervention survey. These anticipated findings led to the investigation of the degree mentoring contributes to the participant’s satisfaction. All participants were aware, with 55% being extremely aware of the impact, 37.03% moderately aware and 7% aware. These findings align with the anticipated outcomes of the staff educational intervention.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

After implementing the intervention, an investigation into mentoring relationships indicated that 55% of the participants were extremely aware of their ability to develop a supportive relationship with mentees. The 100% awareness further showed the increased levels of awareness among participants. This is a significant improvement from an average of 30% awareness in the pre-intervention survey(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship). On leadership, most participants (70.4%) were extremely aware of their ability to inspire excellence by articulating vision, integrity, and courage after the mentorship program. However, 3% of the participants did not respond to the question. Compared to 11% in the pre-intervention survey, 97% awareness underlines the staff educational intervention’s impact on increasing the participants’ awareness of mentorship’s critical aspects.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

On the role of mentoring during orientation and transition into nursing practice, 97% of the participants were aware of how mentoring helps the nurse transition into the workplace(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship). The findings show that 65% of that group are extremely aware of the importance of mentoring during nurse transition into the clinical workplace. Lastly, on the need to educate senior professional nurses on effective mentorship to improve nursing awareness, train new nurses, and verbalize how to be a good mentor at the end of a mentorship program, all participants were extremely aware, with 85% being extremely aware. The anticipated findings underline participants’ commitment to improving upon gaining awareness on the need for mentorship action. The finding also highlights the gap in knowledge on the execution of mentoring action and the need for regular mentoring training.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

Recommendations

For a mentor to have improved skills in the mentoring process, they need awareness skills of teaching skills and sharing, then one needed to perfect the interpersonal, cognitive instrumental, and systematic cognitive competencies. A competent mentor should at least have six mentoring skills(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship). The six recommended skills included: having a taste at improving and developing independence, stating any disparity in mentorship, having and perfecting effective communication, must have expressing expectations, must have the ability to access comprehension together with having the ability to promote development in the nursing profession.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

There was a recorded improvement in the mentor’s mentorship before and after intervening in the empowerment role, as was evident in the caring approach theory. It was apparent that discussion, establishing relationships, and the awareness of an academic supervisor could increase understanding of mentorship. With all this awareness, it was then seen, as it would improve long-term care for all mentor nurses. (Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

Contribution of the Doctoral Project Team

During the planning stage of the DNP study, there were meetings held by the doctoral project team aimed at discussing the best practice guidelines, educational curriculum approval, and the literature review. After the educational intervention development was done, consultation of five nurses, experts in nursing mentorship and awareness, was done to source feedback and approval. The feedback given, and mentorship acquired helped in the validation process of the educational curriculum.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

In the implementation phase, educational intervention delivery depended on the schedule of the nursing mentorship staff unit. The informative response was put under the responsibility of the nurse managers and charge nurses. The coordination of meetings with the staff schedules and synchronization of the educational interventions during the yearly mentorship were factors that contributed to a smooth information delivery within a short time.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

During data collection and analysis, it was discovered that a simple query in its complexity would deter a smooth data collection as it negatively affected the accuracy. The ITT, LTC team, and the DNP student collaborated to ensure the data collected was accurate and confidential as it would not be accessed or availed to the unwanted audience (Holmström et al., 2017). The willingness and dedication to participate in developing efficacy and ethics made a crucial sense of teamwork dynamics.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

A collaboration between the team lead mentors, and the study process was carried out concurrently.  To create a more extensive study in the literature, relevant and constructive questioning helped improve the mentorship.  Every interaction made helped in getting a better comprehension of the project’s essence to the relevant organization.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

The members of the DNP team were the same members involved in the interdisciplinary team. The team mandated the promotion of nursing awareness and mentorship to provide mentorship competencies to the mentors in the team.  The study helped in reminding the team members of the significance of abiding by the best practice guidelines. It also helped in team building as it created a discussion of future studies on the same or different research topic.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

Strengths and Limitations of the Project

The project’s noted strengths included the availability of hundreds of individuals who were available to be employed as nurses since most were registered. This has been significant growth in the LTC facility in the US. This helped to maintain a nursing skills mix suitable for mentee’s acuity, which became difficult with time. The projected strength was boosted by the Nursing mentorship program, which made them vacate their held posts as nursing staff and mentors who were available to mentor the newly hired nurses by using the first years’ experiences(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship). They experienced nurses had an obligation of fulfilling the duties of their profession of mentoring the inexperienced nurses. With the increasing life expectancy, there was created LTC by the mentoring of the nurses to strive and reach the expectations of many in the country (Frouzandeh et al. 2018). The nursing mentorship had enough mentor expertise from the new graduates who were still involved with the organization and were committed to applying the skills they have learned. The mentors could also focus on the mentees and ensure that they get highly qualified experts, which they used to apply in themselves; hence, the mentoring process assured long-term care. The whole mentorship process to the nurses ensured long-term care services as it acted as a bridge contributing to the nursing awareness improvement among the experienced nurses as an LTC mentor.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

The long-term care had some turnovers that nurses experienced with some of them with less than one year of services at a rate of above the LTCF mean at the project organization that maintained many patients who have many difficulties attain the long-term care. The nurses’ recorded turnover projected that there were some difficulties that the mentoring nurses had to demonstrate to be a need for many nurses to be added to meet the ever-growing demand for mentorship. Seasoned nurses were the only ones who were considered experts in their fields and were the only candidates who could offer mentorship services to all the generations.(Comprehensive Essay on Impact of Nurse Awareness on LTC Mentorship)

Reference

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/