Nurse leaders carry expanding responsibility for quality, safety, staff engagement, and culture amid workforce shortages and escalating system demands. They experience high levels of distress and burnout, threatening role effectiveness, retention, and the stability of nursing teams. Formal, leadership-level mentoring is a promising yet underused strategy to enhance well-being, foster professional growth, and strengthen succession planning. This article synthesizes current evidence on nurse leader well-being and mentoring, describing key drivers of distress and examining how mentoring can address individual, relational, and system-level contributors to well-being. Common barriers and facilitators to effective mentoring structures are outlined, and practical strategies are offered for designing and sustaining programs that support resilience, psychological safety, and leadership capacity. Specific implications are highlighted for pediatric surgical and perioperative nurse leaders, given the high-acuity, high-stress nature of perioperative environments. By intentionally incorporating mentoring into organizational strategy, health systems can protect the nurse leadership pipeline, promote a culture of support and belonging, and improve outcomes for nurses, patients, and organizations.
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