The Global Leadership Mentoring Community: An evaluation of its impact on nursing leadership.

AIM: To evaluate a year-long mentorship program, pairing nurses from different regions across the world to support their global leadership capability, and identifying additional consequences of their participation. BACKGROUND: Investment in developing nurse leaders continues as a strategic global imperative. Building on the first cohort's recommendations, this second program illustrates continued progress. PROGRAM EVALUATION: Using the logic model of program evaluation, this non-empirical paper uses data collected from anonymized questionnaires and participants' stories to help improve the program, illustrating innovative practices to develop the confidence and competence of emerging and established nurse leaders globally. DISCUSSION: The value of mentorship was recognized, and there were gains for both mentors and mentees in the development of leadership confidence and competence. Through engagement and collaboration with the whole community, participants were encouraged to understand their own and others' cultures avoiding assumptions and stereotypes. CONCLUSION: This evaluation illustrates that in addition to helping improve future programs, mentorship has enabled the growth of individuals' skill sets and the confidence to reach out to peers across the world to understand the meaning of global health and to make a meaningful contribution to the challenges they face. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING PRACTICE: Nurse managers should be encouraged to develop and formalize a mentoring culture to benefit the leadership competence and well-being of their workforce. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING POLICY: Every nurse has a responsibility to invest in nursing leadership for themselves and others. Mentorship can assist nurse leaders to build workforce capability to lead and contribute to the policy agenda locally, nationally, and internationally. Starting early and at the individual level, global mentorship programs can develop leadership expertise to help nurses find their voice and strengthen their confidence and competence to lead and therefore build the strategic leaders of the future.

Reflections of mentors and mentees on a national mentoring programme for pharmacists in the United Kingdom: An examination into organisational culture and systems.

BACKGROUND: There is no accepted or consistent model for delivering mentoring programmes, manifesting in some debate surrounding the ideal conducive system. Mentorship structures and culture within pharmacy can be advanced by researching experiences of mentors and mentees. OBJECTIVE: To explore lived experiences of participants in a nationwide mentoring programme in relation to motivations and barriers associated with engaging with mentoring, and what system changes and organisational culture shift could further support mentoring for pharmacy professionals. METHODS: This study adopted a constructivist research paradigm, with a qualitative design to focus on how participants interpreted the world and their experiences. Verbatim transcripts of recordings were examined using deductive and inductive thematic analysis. RESULTS: Participants in twenty one-to-one interviews appreciated the programme's allowance for organic relationships to occur, its contribution towards advancing the profession forward, its flexibility, and available resources. They discussed training needs and a more formal onboarding process into the programme that facilitated greater awareness of resources, as well as the need to evaluate and tweak it. System changes were highlighted so that mentoring can be part of the organisational culture, such as incorporating mentoring in job descriptions to increase capacity, senior members of the profession acting as role models, and linking mentoring to existing education and development structures. CONCLUSION: Data demonstrated the need for formal structure but that which allowed for informal and organic relationships to develop. It is paramount for sponsoring organisations to provide resources and continuously monitor the program. The rich information gathered on administrative support and structure of a mentoring programme, along with its organisational facets, should help organisations when implementing similar initiatives. An organisation sponsoring or administering a mentoring programme must take actions that help codify its mentoring culture and its advocacy of mentoring as key to advancement for its profession's members.