Mentoring Collaborative

Strengthening Nurse Retention Through Structured Early-Career Mentorship

In Spring 2026, NJCCN launched a mentoring collaborative for the healthcare organizations in its acute care Nurse Residency Collaborative. Mentoring is critical to retention beyond the first year of employment/residency and enhances career growth, a sense of belonging and support, workplace well-being, job engagement, and job satisfaction. The goal of NJCCN’s mentoring collaborative is to support hospitals to provide early-career nurse mentorship to nurses who are at or near residency program completion where mentors are formally matched with one or more mentees for a time-limited mentorship program. The figure below demonstrates the flow of programming for new graduate nurses upon hire to Early-Career Nurse Mentorship.

Hospitals in the collaborative who participate customized their program to meet their mission, strategic priorities, and needs. They determined how to design and implement the program and whether they would like to extend it to other nurses, such as new nurse leaders or even all nurses in their organization who are interested in receiving mentorship. Pre and post evaluations and program evaluations are collected to measure its success and promote continuous improvement.

Access to MentorLead

The NJCCN Mentoring Collaborative uses MentorLead as the central platform for mentoring programs across participating hospitals. This platform provides mentors and mentees with the tools, resources, and structure needed to support meaningful professional development and collaboration.

Through MentorLead, participants can access their mentoring program, track progress, communicate with their mentor or mentee, and engage with the broader mentoring community.

Participating Hospitals

Select your hospital below to access the mentoring platform.

AtlantiCare Capital Health Cooper Health Hunterdon Health Jefferson Health East Region University Hospital NJCCN Community