Mentorship at UCalgary Nursing

UCalgary Nursing is proud of its history in supporting mentorship for students and faculty, especially in the last decade. This January, which is mentorship month in many parts of the world, we acknowledge how important a mentoring relationship is to the profession of nursing.

What is unique about mentoring in a nursing context?

Nursing mentorship differs from the similar activities of preceptorship, clinical supervision and job shadowing, as it has no inherent evaluative component, might not take place in the practice or education setting and involves a component of mutual sharing of personal and professional experiences and philosophies of practice in order to develop a mutually beneficial relationship. Mentorship opens a space for reflection on the mentee’s own practice, guided by a mentor who has experience in similar situations.

Enhances

the student experience

Prepares

students for a challenging nursing career

Promotes

within our entire UCalgary Nursing community

UCalgary mentorship expert shares her simple mentoring tips

UCalgary Nursing assistant professor Dr. Lorelli Nowell MN’12, PhD’17 shares tips around establishing a good nursing mentoring relationship

Alumni nurses reunite and reminisce on their nursing journeys

Arlene Johnston BN’79, MEd’81 and Wes Radulski BN’82 first met at Rockyview General Hospital and still maintain ties to UCalgary Nursing today

Mentees-turned-mentors pay it forward in UCalgary Nursing’s NurseMentor program

Alumni nurses Brenna Nagy BN'21 and Josephine Lee BN'19 give back to nursing students

Within the University of Calgary, there is a strong emphasis on mentorship among faculty members.

The Mentorship Guide for Teaching and Learning from UCalgary’s Taylor Institute of Teaching and Learning provides a practical framework to inspire and enrich mentoring relationships for teaching development. Two faculty members were part of a large collaborative of academic colleagues who worked on the guide and who have brought many of the principles of mentorship to UCalgary Nursing.

NurseMentor offers undergraduate students unique experience

The faculty’s desire to engage alumni more coincided with the evident need for undergraduate nursing students to learn from those who had come before them – senior students and also RNs. In 2013, a group of students, staff and faculty members started a mentorship group – Passing the Torch – which brought together cohorts according to term of study and paired them with a term in a later year. This gradually became a peer mentorship group within the Undergraduate Nursing Society. Discussions on assisting students in their final year transitioning into the profession evolved into an alumni-student matching program called NurseMentor. It piloted in 2017.

While the student mentee is empowered by the mentoring relationship and able to expand possibilities within their practice, the nurse mentor has the personal satisfaction of sharing his or her wisdom, knowledge and past experiences with the mentee. The mentorship process allows experienced nurses to ‘pass the torch’ to novice nurses who are about to enter the profession.

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