School Nurse Mentorship Resource

Mentorship can be a valuable resource, especially for school nurses. Interested in finding someone to help guide you through the early stages of your career as a school nurse? Here are a few tips and tricks to help you maximize your school nurse mentorship experience!
 

Finding the perfect match 

Finding the right mentor is the most important step and will help to set you up for success. Consider finding an individual with similar characteristics and workplace environment including: 

    • School level (i.e., elementary, middle, high school) 
    • School locale/geographic area (i.e., rural, urban, suburban) 
    • Caseload 
    • Student to nurse ratio 
    • School economic status (i.e. Title 1)

 Not sure where to find a possible mentor? Here are a few ideas: 

    • Within your own school district/county or neighboring counties 
    • PRO Wellness School Nurse Mentorship program 
    • Pennsylvania Association of School Nurses and Practitioners (PASNAP)
    • National Association of School Nurses (NASN) 

 You found a mentor, now what? 

    1. Connect with one another and figure out a schedule that works best for you both. Mentorship can happen both in-person or virtually.  
    2. Make an action plan with personalized goals and topics to help guide your individualized mentoring sessions. Consider utilizing the National Association of School Nurse’s (NASN) School Nursing Practice Framework for this. For more information visit: https://www.nasn.org/nasn-resources/framework 
    3. Begin meeting and getting to know one another! Let your meetings be guided by your needs and your completed action plan while allowing flexibility for timely situations that may need addressed throughout the year. 
    4. As the school year ends, evaluate your mentorship experience to make sure that you are getting what you need from it. Mentorship looks different for everyone, so feel free to make changes where you see fit.

Example Action Plan Summary

Here is an example summary of how you can outline your mentorship meetings. Please know that you may deviate from these topics, should something else take precedence. 

Meeting #1 (November): 

      • NASN Framework Component = Standards of Practice 
      • Standards of Practice Topic = Clinical Competence

Meeting #2 (December): 

      • NASN Framework Component = Care Coordination 
      • Standards of Practice Topic = Chronic Disease Management

Meeting #3 (January): 

      • NASN Framework Component = Care Coordination 
      • Standards of Practice Topic = Collaborative Communication 

  Meeting #4 (February): 

      • NASN Framework Component = Quality Improvement 
      • Standards of Practice Topic = Documentation/Data Collection 

Meeting #5 (March): 

      • NASN Framework Component = Care Coordination 
      • Standards of Practice Topic = Education