At a Multi-State Academic Health System, 93% of Nurses Who Complete Residency Mentoring Stay

At a glance

• Segment: Multi-state academic health system with more than a dozen hospitals, from large campuses to small, isolated sites, and a nurse residency that takes in more than 900 new nurses a year
• Industry: Healthcare
• Location: United States, with hospitals in several states
• Programs: Nurse residency mentoring, career mentoring for nursing staff

The Challenge

The health system's nurse residency is required to offer mentoring, and more than 900 newly qualified nurses enter it each year, a number expected to grow. Yet before the current approach, only about five people took part in residency mentoring. Taking part is voluntary, and each match depended on what an individual administrator happened to know.

Geography made it harder. Nursing mentoring is offered across more than a dozen hospitals in several states. On a large campus, a nurse is surrounded by experienced colleagues. At a small, isolated site, there may be no one nearby to ask. Informal mentoring happens where people already know each other, so the nurses with the fewest local options had the least chance of finding a mentor.

Mentoring also had to show its work. Magnet standards for mentoring are data driven, and many ask for before-and-after evidence. Informal pairings left little to track.

Beyond the residency, nursing wanted a career mentoring track open to any nurse who wants to grow.

Why Chronus

For the nursing education team, the deciding value was reach: Chronus takes mentoring beyond the local pockets where it already happened informally, while each program keeps its own way of working.

• Small sites are no longer cut off. Nurses can find a mentor beyond their own hospital.
• Each program keeps its own way in. Residency administrators invite eligible nurses and assign the mentee role; career mentoring lets nurses enroll themselves. Matching can follow location or specialty.
• Matching comes off the team's plate. Routine invitations and connections run automatically, so administrators handle exceptions, not every pair.
• Progress is visible. Administrators can follow each relationship's progress and evaluations.

Our residency mentoring program has better matching and better tracking with Chronus than we had before.

Nursing education specialist, nurse residency

The Solution

Mentoring built into the residency

Before each residency class, administrators send invitations so nurses can complete their profiles. A nursing education specialist introduces mentoring during class, and each resident decides whether to take part. When residents finish the program, the team invites them to mentor the next group, so each class helps support the one that follows.

Local choices inside one program

Some regions match residents by location, and some specialty services match within their own field. One regional team sends its own mentee invitations inside the shared residency track. Oversight can be delegated too: one specialty unit's group of around 40 people, most of them mentors, has its own moderator, with access limited to that group, who handles local invitations and keeps an eye on activity.

Automation with a human check

Routine invitations and connections run automatically, and the residency administrator steps in on exceptions. If a pairing is not a good fit, the administrator closes it so the nurse can choose someone else.

Evidence for Magnet

Progress tracking and evaluations in the platform give the team the data that Magnet standards ask for. For the narrative examples, the team reaches out to mentoring pairs directly and gathers their stories.

The Impact

Nurses who complete mentoring stay

The nursing team matched records of completed mentoring connections against HR data to see who stayed and who moved into other roles.

• 7% or less turnover among nurses who completed residency mentoring
• Under 10% turnover among nurses who completed career mentoring

A residency reaccredited, with mentoring in its materials

The nurse residency has been reaccredited. Its reaccreditation materials describe the platform as a good way to standardize mentoring and offer it to residents.

Mentoring that reaches beyond the big campuses

The benefit of the platform is that we can reach our small, isolated sites that don't have this option.

Nursing education specialist

• 45+ residency mentoring enrollments in each of two recent quarters, a level the team describes as holding steady
• 20+ people fully matched and taking part in residency mentoring at an early checkpoint