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Mentorship is a professional obligation of nurses (Meier, 2013; Vance, 2002) and a key construct of clinical education and nursing practice. At the same time, mentorship is not taught in many nursing schools (including Canada); nor is it included in nursing curricula. The tradition of mentorship within the nursing profession is rooted in the nineteenth century career of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing (Palmer, 1985). While many people influenced Nightingale’s career, Sir Sidney Herbert, who recruited Nightingale to organize nurses for the Crimean War, was an important mentor to her, rooting mentoring in her nursing practice (Fields, 1991). Because of this mentorship, Pellat (2006) suggests that Florence Nightingale may have then become the first nurse mentor. Other influential nurse pioneers, such as Linda Richards, Mary Adelaide Nutting, and Annie Goodrich, also had mentors who helped cultivate their abilities and offered them opportunities to use their abilities (Fields, 1991). These interactions appear to be based on traditional apprenticeship mentor/mentee relationship (Fields, 1991), that are hierarchal and typically non-reciprocal. And while mentoring processes and practices have changed over time, the significance of mentoring within nursing has remained a foundational aspect of professional development within the profession and a requirement of many nursing professional bodies.
The purpose of this paper is to explore and analyze the evolution of mentorship models to arrive at an argument which states that a nursing student peer mentorship model can benefit the profession of nursing and help address four identified contemporary challenges within Canadian nursing practice and education. Specifically, this paper attempts to address the following research questions:
What has been the evolution of nursing mentorship models from the 1940s onward within (but not exclusive to) Canada?
What are the theoretical and philosophical roots and influences of each mentorship model?
What are the contemporary challenges facing the profession of Canadian nursing today that can be addressed through a mentorship model?
Which mentorship model(s) are best suited to address the identified challenges facing the profession of nursing?
As will be articulated later in this paper under the heading “Contemporary Challenges and Future Considerations in Mentorship, Nursing Education, and Practice,” there are many challenges facing Canadian nursing today; however, for the purposes of this paper, the author identified four...