Speed Mentoring in Doctoral Nursing Education: A Quality-Improvement Project Tackling Student Anxiety, Confidence, and Understanding

Background: Doctoral nursing students often enter programs with limited familiarity and confidence using evidence-based practice (EBP) tools and program expectation uncertainty. This can impede early engagement and scholarly project progress. This quality improvement project, using speed mentoring for guidance on final projects and effective use of EBP tools, aimed to decrease anxiety and increase confidence and understanding among first-year doctoral nursing students. Method: A pre-posttest design was used. Two 30-minute virtual speed mentoring sessions were conducted. Five third-year students mentored 25 first-year students. Student mentees completed a survey assessing changes in anxiety, confidence, and topic understanding. Results: Twenty-five students participated in two speed mentoring sessions. Following sessions, mentees reported decreased anxiety, increased confidence, and improved understanding of mentoring topics, improved with plan-do-study-act (PDSA) cycles. Conclusion: This speed peer-mentoring approach may support early engagement with academic tools and program expectations, reducing anxiety and improving confidence to succeed in doctoral nursing programs.