According to Abraham Brody, PhD, RN, GNP-BC, Assistant Professor at the New York University Rory Meyers College of Nursing (NYU Meyers), healthcare professionals in academia who receive formal mentorship by senior faculty early on in their careers experience a host of advantages including faster career advancement and higher job satisfaction.
Brody is also the Associate Director of the Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing (HIGN) where he has seen firsthand that there are not enough senior faculty to go around in most professional nursing settings, especially geriatrics. With many academic institutions facing a shortage of senior and mid-career faculty due to aging and retiring faculty, early career individuals are left in a position that requires them to mature more quickly and become mentors themselves.
Several studies on preparing the next generation of gerontological academic leaders and researchers have been conducted during the 2000s to determine how effective peer mentoring programs are. With the dire need for mentors in nursing increasing, especially in the field of geriatrics, Dr. Brody decided to lead a team of researchers in assessing an established mentoring program called the “Building Academic Geriatric Nursing Capacity” (BAGNC) program. Brody published his surveys of the experiences of mentors and mentees in Nursing Outlook, titled “Evaluation of a peer mentoring program for early career gerontological nursing faculty and its potential for application to other fields in nursing and health sciences.”
Dr. Brody’s study found that 64.7% of mentors and 72.7% of mentees found value in the BAGNC program. Mentees placed value in the program for increasing the scope of their network, improving their ability to work at a distance in teams, and providing them with an opportunity to learn more about research and experiences at other healthcare institutions. Mentors and mentees agreed that goal setting at the start of the program left some room for improvement.
The researchers who conducted the study also looked beyond gerontological nursing faculty, outlining the program’s potential for application in other fields of nursing. The mentoring model used in the study offers a low-cost option to both mentors and mentees, and could serve as a model for other professional organizations, academic institutions, and consortiums to enhance formal mentorship models used for early academic career individuals.
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