Organizing “Nursing Mentors Committee”: an Effective Strategy for Improving Novice Nurses’ Clinical Competency

Introduction: One of the most significant problems in clinical environment is the unskilled and inexperienced nurses. This is while, most managers are not aware of nurses' proficiency and competency level. Therefore, applying the new strategy of "organizing nursing mentors committee" by managers as well as their orientation in this regard could be considered as a strategy to improve clinical competency. Methods: This quasi-experimental study as two group design was performed to assess the clinical competency level of five novice nurses and their performance on 72 patients hospitalized in medical-surgical wards in one of the hospitals in Tehran in 2005. They were divided into two experiment and control groups, and were evaluated before and after the intervention. Data was collected using observational checklists in communicative, cognitive, and psychomotor competency domains as double blinded. Number of patients in the experiment group was 32 and in the control group was 40 which were matched before and after the intervention in each group. The allocation of the novice nurses into groups and wards was done randomly. Data was analyzed by SPSS software. Results: Clinical competency of the novice nurses increased in all three domains in both groups. Paired t–test showed this increase in both groups. Moreover, independent t-test demonstrated that the mean difference in the experiment group was higher than the control group. Novice nurses' clinical competency was in a primary level in both groups before the intervention, but, after 3 months was promoted to the advanced level in the experiment group who were exposed to mentors committee. Conclusion: Organizing "nursing mentors committee" is an effective strategy for nursing managers, in order to help novice nurses who need to acquire clinical competency in different domains in a limited time frame.