Mentoring and Preceptorship

As part of their professional identity and subject to their practice context, school nurses are encouraged to participate in mentoring novice school nurses. Mentoring is “…a singular dyad relationship or a grouping of dyad relationships that can be hierarchical or peer-to-peer. McBride and colleagues suggest that the mentoring relationship seeks to support, teach, encourage, challenge, advise, protect, and sponsor a nurse protégé to realize and develop their own potential within the nursing profession. Mentoring promotes confidence through a safe relationship with a mentor and is now considered by the ANA to be a professional responsibility. Precepting students of nursing is also a valuable way to introduce future nurses to the specialty of school nursing.