Development and Evaluation of a Mentoring Program Designed to Assist Nursing Students Adjust to Life in College and Strengthen their Leadership Abilities

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a mentoring program designed to assist nursing students adjust to life in college and strengthen their leadership abilities. The mentoring program consisted of nine sessions including information on basic mentorship functions, as well as the results of similar previous studies. This was a quasi-experimental study with a non-equivalent control group pre-post test design in order to evaluate the results of this program. Mentoring and data collection were performed from March 3 to May 30, 2014. The experimental group participants included 20 mentee students (in grades 1 and 2), and 20 mentors (in grades 3 and 4). Both pre and post tests were administered before and after the mentoring program. The score for "adjust to life in college" was more significantly increased in the mentee student experimental group as compared with the control group. Similarly, the post test score for "leadership" was more significantly increased from the pre test score in the mentor student experimental group. However, no statistically significant differences were found for the post-pre test "leadership" score between the mentor student experimental group and the control group. These results suggested that mentoring had a significant effect on the ability of nursing students to adjust to life in college, as well as to strengthen their leadership abilities, and the program needs more developed contents for leadership.