Mentoring benefits and issues for public health nurses

New public health nurses (PHNs) move from novice to expert status with enor mous expectations from their organization, their peers, and themselves. The se expectations lead to stress that may be beyond the level of endurance. M entoring is an important answer to this problem. Mentoring is the greatest gift PHNs can give to each other, especially for PHNs who self-identified t hemselves as minority cultural group members. This article describes defini tions, roles, benefits, and responsibilities of mentors and mentees and inc ludes mentoring concerns, current and proposed mentoring programs, and ment oring issues for gender and race. Organizational mentoring programs can be created that will facilitate the development of mentoring relationships. Th ese programs help experienced PHNs bridge the gap between the theory and re ality of nursing for themselves and inexperienced colleagues.