Introduction: Mentoring programs minimize stress and anxiety in recent graduates and in newly recruited nurses, guiding their careers and enabling them to retain their skills and correctly care for patients. The objective of this scoping review is to explore and summarize the existing literature on mentoring models and programs in the clinical nursing context.
Methods: The databases searched include PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, Epistemonikos, Cuiden, Scielo, MEDES, OpenGrey, Trove and MedNar. Published and unpublished studies worldwide that included nurse mentoring programs in a clinical context, in public and private systems and primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare settings, and articles published in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese, were included. Nurse students and training specialists were excluded. The papers were screened by two independent reviewers. In cases of discrepancy, a third reviewer made the decision.
Results: Eleven studies were included. Most of them were conducted in the USA. A wide range of nurse mentoring programs were identified with highly variable characteristics. The duration of the programs and the evaluation systems were different, but the expected results matched.
Conclusions: Mentoring programs need more in-depth and extensive study. In spite of their differences, they all lead to improvements for nurses, patients and organizations. A gender influence was found in our results, which could be studied in future research.
Keywords: clinical nurse; mentee; mentor; mentoring; mentors; nurse clinician; nurse specialist; nurse staff; nursing staff.