Abstract Although there are over three million registered nurses in the United States, the national nursing shortage has reached epic proportions, with a vacancy rate of 9.9%. One of the contributing factors to the nursing shortage is the lack of qualified nursing faculty. While formal mentoring programs have been identified as best practice in supporting the expert nurse clinician in their transition into the novice nurse faculty role, these programs are not consistently implemented in schools of nursing. In this phenomenological study, the perceptions of nursing leaders regarding barriers to the implementation of formal mentoring programs were analyzed. Using a semistructured interview, six nursing school leaders were interviewed focusing on their perceptions of formal mentoring programs for novice nursing faculty. Findings of this study showed that nursing school leaders believe that mentoring programs are effective in supporting the novice nurse faculty in their role transition. Nursing leaders did, however, identify the barriers of human capacity, incentivization, and budgetary constraints to the implementation of formal mentoring programs. These barriers often outweighed the positive effects of formal mentoring programs. Nursing schools can enter academic partnerships with hospitals or secure grant funding to help support the implementation of formal mentoring programs. Additionally, working with novice mentors on how to teach someone to teach will be invaluable to the mentor dyad. Keywords: nurse, novice nurse academic, nurse educator, mentoring, orientation, transition, retentio
