Background Palliative care nursing is a specialised field that focuses on providing compassionate and holistic care to patients and their families. It requires nurses that are highly skilled and experienced. In a hospice in-patient setting a Legacy Mentor role was developed in response to the reducing supply of new nursing registrants and an ageing workforce, and in recognition of the skills and experience of nurses approaching retirement age.

Aims To improve the retention and experience of late career registered nurses and reduce attrition amongst staff early in their careers. Enhancing the quality care delivered to patients in an in-patient setting.

Method The Legacy Mentor role was informed by the evidence base and co-produced with late career nurses. The Legacy Mentor supported new starters and those developing in their current role focussing on mentorship, knowledge transition, support and development of new learners in practice. Feedback was obtained from the Legacy Mentor and new starters, staff onboarding satisfaction was monitored and staff turnover figures were reviewed.

Result A Legacy Mentor role has potential to address nurses’ individual career development needs, valuing and retaining them in the workforce, enabling them to share professional knowledge and skills within clinical teams and offers a solution to improving retention of late career nurses. It has the potential to ensure that those who are new to palliative care nursing are provided with the essential skills and experiences required for their role.

Conclusion Addressing the needs of late career registered nurses is required to improve retention, job satisfaction, quality-of-care provision and facilitate knowledge transfer. The Legacy Mentor role can ensure consistent support and agreed standards and values the skills and experience that new people bring. The Legacy Mentor role can retain experience and can lead to improvements in new starters’ performance, commitment, job satisfaction and intentions to remain.