Transforming Students' Educational Experience Through Cultural Mindedness, Peer Mentoring, and Student Input.

Background: Increasing student diversity within schools of nursing requires a shift in the educational environment to consider student challenges, need for support, and other cultural variances.

Method: This article describes a three-pronged process of instilling cultural mindfulness training to faculty, staff, and administrators, augmenting student support through peer mentoring and a new method of sharing student perspectives of the educational environment with administration to co-design new approaches to support students.

Results: The entire process resulted in an increased sensitization to the importance of student perspectives as key players in the pursuit of a culture of inclusion for nursing education.

Professionalization and retention outcomes of a university-service mentoring program partnership.

With the use of a university-service partnership to introduce mentoring and shared governance, the aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of these interventions on nurse perceptions of the supportive culture of the workplace environment, professional skill development, decisional involvement, and retention and vacancy rates. A nonequivalent pretest-posttest, noncontrol group design was used with mentors of newly hired mentees to evaluate their workplace perspectives following mentor classes, ongoing mentor support, and a formal mentor-management workforce governance board. A convenience sample of 89 RNs from two acute care facilities attended mentoring and professionalization classes and worked with 109 mentees over 1-3 years.

Nurses supporting nurses: creating a mentoring program for staff nurses to improve the workforce environment.

Background: The hospital workforce environment has been recognized as an important factor for nurse retention and patient safety, yet there is ongoing evidence that inadequate communication, intraprofessional oppression, and lack of collaboration and conflict resolution continue to disempower nurses and hinder improvement of workforce conditions.

Purpose: A 3-year academic-hospital partnership developed and used a registered nurse (RN) mentor and advocacy program to improve the RN work environment and selected patient outcomes.

Method: The partnership initiated mentor-mentee teams and a Workforce Environment Governance Board, and obtained preliminary data on outcomes related to mentor-mentee teamwork, changes in the level of support within each unit, and the impact of improved working conditions on nurse and patient satisfaction, nurse vacancy and turnover rates, and 3 patient safety outcomes related to fall and pressure ulcer prevention and use of restraints.