Hindawi Publishing Corporation Nursing Research and Practice Volume 2012, Article ID 168278, 9 pages doi:10.1155/2012/168278 Research Article The Effect of Mentoring on Career Satisfaction of Registered Nurses and Intent to Stay in the Nursing Profession Bette Mariani College of Nursing, Villanova University, Driscoll Hall, Room 352, 800 Lancaster Avenue, Villanova, PA 19085, USA Correspondence should be addressed to Bette Mariani, bette.mariani@villanova.edu Received 7 December 2011; Revised 10 February 2012; Accepted 19 February 2012 Academic Editor: Linda Ferguson Copyright © 2012 Bette Mariani. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Mentoring is important in the career development of novice and experienced nurses. With the anticipated shortage in nursing, it is important to explore factors such as mentoring that may contribute to career satisfaction and intent to stay in the profession. This study explored the eﬀects of mentoring on career satisfaction and intent to stay in nursing, and the relationship between career satisfaction and intent to stay in nursing. It was conducted through a mailed survey of RNs 55 years or younger currently in practice, education, administration, or research. Career satisfaction was measured through the use of the newly developed Mariani Nursing Career Satisfaction Scale. Findings revealed no statistically signiﬁcant eﬀect of mentoring on career satisfaction and intent to stay in nursing. There was a statistically signiﬁcant relationship between career satisfaction and intent to stay in nursing. The majority of nurses reported participating in a mentoring relationship. Although the ﬁndings related to mentoring, career satisfaction, and intent to stay were not statistically signiﬁcant, there was a prevalence of mentoring in nursing, thus suggesting the need for future research to identify outcomes of mentoring. In addition, the study contributed a newly developed instrument to measure the concept of career satisfaction in nursing. 1. Introduction Mentoring is important in the career development of both novice and experienced nurses in the areas of clinical practice, nursing education, administration, and research, as it supports the novice’s need to feel satisfaction and success as a professional nurse and oﬀers the experienced nurse an opportunity to contribute to the profession. This study explored the eﬀect of mentoring on career satisfaction and intent to stay in the nursing profession, two critical elements in the retention of nurses in the profession. Despite an encouraging recent 5.7% increase in enroll- ments in baccalaureate nursing programs (American Associ- ation for Colleges of Nursing (AACN)) [1], it is anticipated that the nursing shortage will continue to be a major issue in nursing in the United States for years to come. According to the AACN [1, 2], there are several factors inﬂuencing the nursing shortage, including insuﬃcient numbers of nursing faculty, an aging nursing workforce, increasing healthcare needs of an elderly patient population, and nursing job burn- out and dissatisfaction that are driving nurses away from the profession. Recent economic challenges have temporarily aﬀected the nursing shortage and the need for nurses in some regions of the United States; however, with the com- bination of older nurses retiring from practice, academia, and administration, and dissatisﬁed nurses leaving nursing, the profession of nursing must identify strategies to increase recruitment and retention to address the nursing shortage, especially in practice and academia. Mentoring may be one such strategy. Although the shortage in any one of the areas may be viewed in isolation, there is an interdependent aspect to the shortage. A shortage in the area of clinical practice aﬀects academia, administration, and research, and a shortage in academia, in turn, aﬀects the clinical practice arena; therefore, these four areas of the profession were stud- ied to determine if mentoring contributed to a greater sense of career satisfaction and intent to stay in the profession. Several factors contribute to the shortage of nurses in the profession. National data indicate that the average age of nurses nationwide continues to increase. In 2008, the average age of nurses nationwide was 48 (HRSA) [3], and it was projected that in 2012, nurses in their 50 s will account for