Abstract:
There is little consensus about the role of mentor, but there is a common theme in the mentoring literature as to the significance of personal characteristics. There is overwhelming agreement about the invaluable contribution of mentors to the students' learning in the clinical situation. The purpose of this study is to discover nurse faculty mentor characteristics important to student nurses based upon Darling's (1984) 14-point mentoring dimension and the characteristics identified in the Measuring Mentoring Potential (MMP). The student nurses to be included in the study are students with a clinical assignment in a Baccalaureate Student Nurse (BSN) program at Ball State University, Indiana Purdue at Fort Wayne, St. Francis College, and Wright State University academic year 2002.