Assessing the Effectiveness of Mentorship in Promoting Leadership Competence Among Nurse Managers

Posted: May 19, 2020

• Sophie Chandler
• Grayson Holt
• Rowan Hayes

Abstract

This research investigates the complex relationship between structured mentorship programs and the development of leadership competencies among nurse managers in contemporary healthcare environments. While mentorship has long been recognized as valuable in nursing professional development, this study employs a novel methodological framework that integrates computational social network analysis with qualitative phenomenological inquiry to examine mentorship effectiveness from both structural and experiential perspectives. The research addresses a significant gap in the literature by moving beyond traditional self-report measures to objectively analyze mentorship dynamics and their impact on leadership development. Through a mixed-methods approach involving 45 nurse managers across three healthcare systems, we developed a unique mentorship effectiveness index that incorporates both quantitative network metrics and qualitative experiential data. Our findings reveal that mentorship effectiveness is significantly influenced by the structural characteristics of mentorship networks, including centrality measures, tie strength, and network diversity, rather than simply the presence or duration of mentorship relationships. Furthermore, we identified four distinct mentorship archetypes that differentially predict leadership competency development across technical, human, and conceptual leadership domains. The study introduces an innovative computational framework for healthcare leadership development that can be adapted across organizational contexts, providing healthcare administrators with evidence-based tools for optimizing mentorship programs. This research contributes original insights to both nursing leadership literature and computational organizational science by demonstrating how network analytics can illuminate the hidden architectures of effective professional development.