Three decisions about nurse mentoring.

The literature of the 1980s and 1990s records enormous interest in mentoring. However, this interest is accompanied by anxiety in many professions that the role of the mentor is not becoming more clearly defined and has rarely been the subject of informative research. This paper reports a research study on the mentor role. The study was carried out with 87 nurse mentors and 39 student nurses. The nurse mentors and the students agree on the essential core of the mentor role. Beyond that, however, the two parties differ in their view. The mentors, in addition to the core of the role, emphasize its supportive aspects. In contrast, the students predict that, in addition to the core of the role, mentors will in future emphasize its challenging aspects. These findings are interpreted in the paper, which ends with a logical analysis of the three decisions facing nursing managers who respond to the findings reported in the paper.