Degree Name

Nursing Practice, DNP

Publication Date

7-7-2025

First Advisor

Sandy King

Second Advisor

Kristie Givens

Abstract

The prevalence of chronic health conditions in children has risen in recent years. As a result, school nurses are now expected to manage medically fragile students while also responding to acute and emergent health issues. This increasing complexity adds extra demands to school nurses, emphasizing the need for strong clinical decision-making skills and confidence. Mentorship programs have been proven to increase the confidence of nurses and are a core essential of the national standards and framework for school nurses. The problems addressed by this project were the lack of a mentorship program in a large school district for newly hired school nurses. The goal of the quality improvement project was to enhance the confidence of new school nurses by implementing a structured mentorship program. Guided by Benner’s Novice to Expert Theory and utilizing the Plan-Do-Study-Act model, the project implemented a four-week mentorship program comprising weekly guided mentoring sessions and resource sharing that measured the confidence level of newly hired school nurses before and after the intervention. An independent t-test revealed a statistically significant increase in the post-intervention confidence scores. The participants also completed a program satisfaction survey, which demonstrated a high level of satisfaction. The results support the integration of mentorship as an evidence-based strategy to improve the confidence of school nurses. By reducing role-related uncertainty, the program contributes to improved nursing practice and student health outcomes in school settings. The mentorship model developed through this project offers a sustainable framework that can be replicated across similar districts.

Rights Management

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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