Mentor‐Student Relationship and Graduate Students' Satisfaction With Mentors: A Moderated Mediation Model

To explore how the mentor-student relationship affects nursing graduate students' satisfaction with mentors, as well as how mentoring mode and learning motivation work together. A multi-centre cross-sectional study. Thirty universities and colleges in eastern, central and western China. A total of 826 nursing graduate students from thirty universities and colleges participated in this study in April 2024. Data were collected using the general information questionnaire, mentor-student relationship entry, mentoring mode questionnaire, graduate students' satisfaction item and learning motivation scale. Data were analysed using SPSS 25.0 software. The PROCESS macro-plugin and the bootstrap method were utilised to examine the mediating and moderating effects of learning motivation and mentoring mode. There was a positive correlation between nursing graduate students' satisfaction with mentors and the mentor-student relationship (r = 0.377, p < 0.001), learning motivation (r = 0.600, p < 0.001), and mentoring mode (r = 0.292, p 0.001). Learning motivation exerted a partial mediation effect between the mentor-student relationship and graduate students' satisfaction with mentors (mediation effect value = 0.182, 95% CI = 0.148-0.218). Mentoring mode moderated the path of learning motivation in the mentor-student relationship (interaction term coefficient = 0.031, 95% CI = 0.005-0.056). Mentor-student relationship positively predicted nursing graduate students' satisfaction with mentors significantly. Learning motivation played a partial mediating effect between mentor-student relationship and graduate students' satisfaction with mentors and mentoring mode moderated between mentor-student relationship and learning motivation pathways. Therefore, cultivating positive teacher/helpful friend relationship, boosting students' learning motivation and improving mentoring mode techniques can all increase nursing graduate students' satisfaction with mentors. No patient or public contribution.