Rachel Mills created a mentoring program in the clinical setting at the local hospital. She was a clinical instructor for both sophomore and junior nursing students on the orthopedic floor on different days of the week. The sophomore students were really struggling on their first days of clinicals, and having only one clinical instructor proved to be a challenge with 10 new students.

As a result, Rachel began rotating her junior nursing students with sophomore nursing students. She had two junior nursing students who would be on the Orthopedics floor at certain times to help the sophomore nursing students gather their information the day before clinicals. Each junior Nursing Student was assigned five sophomore nursing students. The sophomores got a lot of help with simple, but overwhelming tasks for beginners. Things like knowing how to walk into a patient’s room and introduce themselves, take vital signs and get into the hospital’s charting system to document the vital information.  The junior nursing students also felt very smart and accomplished. Rachel heard lots of small talk amongst the juniors and sophomores and could tell they were asking questions they would never have asked her.

Once Rachel introduced this concept to the lead nursing faculty, she helped to implement it across the board with successful results.