The Becker's team is excited to announce the
launch of our new CFO and Revenue Cycle
podcast.
Tune in for conversations with finance experts from
the top hospitals and health systems. We'll discuss
key trends and ideas to drive meaningful change
in the industry. Look for Becker's CFO and
revenue cycle podcast wherever you listen to episodes.
Welcome to the Becker's healthcare podcast. I'm Mariah
Taylor, assistant editor, and I'm thrilled to be
interviewing Lillian Donnelly,
program manager of nursing professional development, and doctor
Sarah Andre,
nurse residency
program coordinator at Intermountain Health St. Joseph Hospital
on the podcast today. Lillian and Sarah, thank
you so much for joining me. I talked
with Lillian not too long ago about group
mentoring and some of the impacts at St.
Joseph Hospital, and it's so exciting to be
able to sit down with you and just
dive a little bit deeper into it. So
let's start by giving me a rundown. Lillian,
How does group mentoring work at your system?
Well, St. Joseph's Hospital
initiated new grad nurse mentoring in 02/2018
with a lot of leadership support, and we've
been had a program
since then. It was individualized. It was one
to one mentoring, one mentor to one new
grad.
However, in 02/2022,
the composition of our workforce changed after COVID,
and we had up to 80%
of new nurses on our units, nurses with
less than two years
of experience, though we were a little hard
pressed to find mentors, to find the time
to mentor, and we had to come up
with a different program.
And after a literature search and a little
bit of research, I found group mentoring as
an option, brought it to my division, brought
it to my director. There was a lot
of support for it, so we began to
run with,
two pilot cohorts of our new group mentoring
program.
We had,
two cohorts using new graduates,
and we used a transition shock model as
our theory base.
We had nursing professional development practitioners. They were
the mentors for the pilot nurse mentorship program.
Their salary, they have professional nursing qualifications.
They have communication skills.
One of their roles is being a mentor,
and so they were just the perfect fit
to be mentors.
We familiarized
them with the transition to shock model so
that they would understand the transition from academia
to professional nursing practice,
and we had mentors lead group mentor sessions
on new graduate nurse education days in the
classrooms.
Currently, we now use nurse mentors instead of
nursing professional developmenters
because our mentees asked that they would have
mentors that were closer to their years in
nursing, someone with maybe three or four years
of nursing,
not a nursing professional development practitioner,
and they're compensated via our nursing professional development
program
with points. So they get points for mentoring
in their in their professional development portfolio.
The mentors listen to any experiences the new
graduate nurses encounter in their practice.
They encourage interactive and supportive discussions, and they
ensure that each session is a safe space
for the nurses to share their experiences.
The discussion center on the stages of the
model, doing,
being, and knowing.
We created standardized mentor memos,
evaluations,
resources to equip the mentors,
especially when we had peer mentors. We have
some microlearning for them, and we have some
modules online to train them in mentoring.
The nurse residency program coordinator, which is Sarah,
scheduled time and space for this program,
and we held one hour group mentor sessions
every other month throughout the twelve month program.
And during months with no scheduled meetings, the
mentors connect with their mentees via text messaging
to maintain the continuity of the mentor and
mentee relationship.
That's also something that the mentees
wanted to have. They wanted to have texting.
We originally started with visiting the unit
in between those meetings, and they want to
be texted. The mentor memos are completed after
each group session, so we get feedback.
Evaluations of the program are conducted at midpoint
and endpoints. And then we review the evaluations,
and then we revise the program accordingly.
Excellent.
When we talked a few weeks ago, one
of the things that impressed me most was
you told me that since implementing
this group mentoring,
nurse retention has risen to ninety seven percent,
which is just absolutely incredible.
So what was group mentoring's part in that
increase?
So group mentoring is just one aspect of
our transition to practice nurse residency program,
that affects our retention.
So along with the group mentoring, we also
incorporate
in person skills days, we do EVP projects
with poster presentations,
we do a lot with gamification,
and we try to include as many other
interactive activities as we can.
However, studies have shown that mentoring has been
linked to increased job satisfaction,
reduced turnover, and encouragement of career planning,
especially when we're working with new graduate nurses.
The group dynamic in our group mentoring provides
just collaborative learning environment,
provides emotional support,
knowledge sharing in the group, and anytime you
provide support and knowledge sharing, it contributes to
that retention.
So mentoring is a key element of our
culture,
but not just the only aspect
that helps our retention of new nurses.
I also ask the new grads to complete
a profile sheet on their first day of
class as a new grad, that just helps
assist their mentor in getting to know them.
We also talk about habit forming goals, so
those small short goals they can just do
in a couple weeks,
some reach goals that are maybe a month
or two out and then also stretch goals.
So looking at the long term of what
they want to do as a nurse, and
that also helps guide some conversations with their
with the mentee and mentor.
We also provide the mentors with icebreaker questions
that allow them to get to know their
mentees better and to to help establish that
psychologically
safe relationship between them.
And lastly, one of the questions that we
have our mentors ask the new grads is
what are you doing for your well-being?
The new graduate nurses appreciate the concern about
their well-being and not just their practice. Supporting
the health and well-being of nurses is one
of the key recommendations in the future of
nursing.
Twenty twenty through 02/1930
reports that we like to keep in the
forefront of our program.
Absolutely.
I love that.
How do you evaluate the effectiveness of group
mentoring, and what are some of those outcomes?
So one of the ways we evaluate the
effectiveness of our group mentoring program, and Lillian
had mentioned this at the beginning, was that
we take the feedback from our midpoint and
our end of the program evaluations.
Just looking at our qualitative data from that,
our evaluations show that the majority of our
new grads
agree that mentors are positive role models, and
they also agree that group mentoring provides the
positive impact, such as the support, the encouragement,
the beneficial
discussions, and contributes to their personal satisfaction as
nurses.
Hundred percent of our new grads in our
evaluations say that they have engaged in sharing
of nursing stories,
during their mentor sessions.
Nursing stories are an interactive learning method for
sharing learnings and experiences,
from experienced nurses
to the novice nurses.
One of the most striking responses, and I
believe it was recently that we got in
the feedback from a new graduate nurse,
was that it was a super impactful experience.
This program has become kind of near and
dear to mine and Lillian's hearts, and so
that was
a pretty profound
statement.
We've also been asked to continue mentoring into
year two of
their nursing journey, which is evidence that they
value the experience and they would like the,
continuation of the support.
Prior to 2022,
our first year new grad retention rate was
around
eighty five percent.
And just for comparison, the national average for
first year retention
of new graduate nurses is around seventy percent,
with an estimated
of thirty three percent of new grads leave
within the first year of their nursing career.
That's absolutely incredible.
And, clearly, you guys are doing something right
here because everybody is loving it. You're getting
such great feedback. But I'm curious, what strategies
are you implementing to sustain this program success
as the nursing workforce continues to evolve?
Well, we are soon going to send out
the March 2024 end of program
evaluation,
and that's our survey
that will look at our second year of
the peer group mentoring.
And as previously mentioned, we're considering incorporating second
year mentoring into the program
as requested by the new graduate nurses, but
we really need to think about what that's
going to look like and how it would
benefit them because it would look a little
different. We want to listen to their feedback,
and we wanna give them the support that
they need. We're also going to start assigning
two mentors per group,
to get some more interaction and more continuity.
One of the comments that the nurse graduate
nurses have provided
is that they value having the same mentor
for each session.
In response to those comments, having two mentors
assures us that if someone has to call
out sick, we're still gonna have that continuity.
There will always be a mentor that they
know and and feel comfortable with. And two
mentors will also help provide a more robust
discussion
and a better opportunity for relationships.
We feel we have enough experienced nurses interested
in group mentoring to fulfill these roles.
Another strategy we will be implementing is to
start surveying the new graduate nurses about the
discussion questions that they'd like to use in
the mentor sessions.
We'll obtain that information through discussion with them
and via the end of program evaluation.
Currently, we ask about their well-being practices in
each session, and we ask questions based on
the stages of the transition shock model. But
we wanna ensure that any of the questions
that we're using, any of these guided questions
are relevant to where they currently are in
their practice,
and that dementia discussions will continue to be
beneficial.
Sarah is always in touch with the new
graduate nurses. She's always there. She follows them
for a year. She hears their concern. She
hears their cares and addresses them. I precept
and mentor nursing students, and I work with
nursing programs.
And in that way, we continue to hear
the heartbeat of their needs and the changes
occurring in nursing training and in the nursing
practice on the units.
This, we realize, is a new generation of
nurses, and we need to change our programs
to accommodate their needs.
To ensure the success of our group mentoring
program, we also need to stay connected with
our new nurses, not just in the first
year, but also as they continue in their
practice and their careers. So we're both involved
in different councils, committees, and our nursing professional
development program
and rounding on the units, speaking to our
nurses,
and working with them so that we can
keep up to date on changes in workforce
and to assist them also in their career
ladder as they become more experienced.
Excellent. Well, this has been an amazing and
informative discussion. Thank you both so much for
joining me on the podcast today.