NP018 Mentoring Internationally educated nurses: Going beyond the conventional

Abstract

St. Paul's Hospital, Vancouver, is BC's quaternary centre for cardiac care. As such, nurses from all over the world seek employment in the Cardiac Surgery Intensive Care Unit. For this and a variety of reasons, many internationally educated nurses (IENs) are hired to join our team. The purpose of this project is to create an orientation program for newly hired IENs, which extends beyond the conventional unit orientation to help them better adapt to both the culture of the unit and the multicultural Vancouver lifestyle. This paper will describe the varied aspects of the project. Our IEN mentorship program begins by matching learning/teaching styles between the mentor and mentee, using our research-based questionnaire. Mentors are supported by education around cultural issues specific to the IEN. The mentor may be one of several nurses who orientate at the bedside with the IEN. Mentors are the check-in persons who meet with the IEN mentee at scheduled intervals and are available via phone or email. We began the implementation phase of this program in January, 2011. Thus far, the responses have been positive. We plan to evaluate this project by surveying IENs and mentors, assessing turnover rates, job satisfaction, and other outcomes. We aim to promote awareness of cultural sensitivity among mentors, educators and managers on units who employ IENs. The success of this program will demonstrate that an enhanced orientation program can provide improved job retention and satisfaction for IENs.