When 1 and 1 equals more than 2
What professional relationship creates synergy and supports the professional development of both participants? The answer is mentoring.
Mentoring is mutually beneficial time spent with a mentor imparting his or her knowledge and experience to a mentee. In a tool called the Five Phase Mentoring Relationship Model created by Cooper and Wheeler (2007) 5 stages of mentoring are recognized. The first is purpose, where each party asks why am I starting this endeavor? The purpose of both mentor and mentee will be the foundation of the mentorship. The second is engaging, where both participants seek to enter into a mentorship. This can be an informal or formal process. The third phase is planning, where the mentor and mentee set out the how of the relationship including goals, resources, expectations and criteria for success. The fourth is emergence where the relationship is developed and then evaluated. The fifth phase is completion, where the relationship can be redefined. A successful mentorship involves concerted effort and commitment by both participants for the 5 stages to be effective.
Why is mentoring an important topic for nursing? Consider the following facts.
Within the next few years the health care system will potentially have millions more patients. Patients today are sicker yet their hospital stays are shorter, which complicates and compresses the time where effective care can be given. Unfortunately at the same time there are fewer experienced and expert RNs in direct care. Despite technological advances, interprofessional communication is hampered by lack of time. There is also increased scrutiny by both the public and regulators concerning quality of care.
The nursing profession has a shortage of nurse educators and many nurses are due to retire in the next decade. These conditions are also exacerbated by the fact that many nursing student applicants are turned away due to lack of capacity both in schools and clinical placements.
This means that those entering the nursing profession will need to be given confidence to be practice ready, remain employed as nurses, and develop their leadership skills so that best practices can be diffused and nurses can participate in the formation of health care policy and also become educators. The health care organizations that have enabled mentorship programs will have higher RN retention rates.
The following are examples of mentorship programs that have been successful.
At Scripps Health in San Diego the vision of the Chief Nursing Officer was to decrease new nurses’ stress and fear of failure. They realized that the preparation of new nurses for direct care could be accelerate by the Clinical Mentor Care Delivery Program or the Nurse Mentoring Program. Experienced RNs became clinical mentors who gave new nurses focused ‘real time experiential learning’. Mentors were selected by a committee and include criteria such as years of experience and performance scores plus an interview. This program resulted in higher nurse retention, physician support, and much better patient outcomes by the prevention of adverse events. It was recognized as a national best practice by AARP Bernard E. Nash award.
Today’s nursing students deal with large classes due to fewer nurse educators, decreased funding for education, and reluctance of hospitals to do clinical placements, as well as increased competency requirements.
One nursing school in Canada has created a peer mentoring model to face these challenges. Senior nursing students are charged with mentoring newer students by helping them develop skills practice and critical thinking, by creating new learning opportunities in the clinical learning center. An added benefit of this program is that the organization of the clinical learning center has improved due to the senior students’ skill and comfort level with technology. Peer mentoring is a 2 way street with the mentor not only imparting confidence and knowledge but also realizing their potential is being realized and what challenges lie ahead for themselves. Both mentor and mentee learn that scientific care is a process of lifelong learning. Peer mentoring helped bridge the gap between the clinical learning center and changing health policy and procedures. The mentors were able to span the difference between theory and real life practice.
Education and practice partnerships need to be expanded. This would create more capacity and opportunity for new graduates to get clinical experience. The strengthening and expansion of education and practice sites will be aided by the wise use of technology for simulation labs, online courses, but most importantly more and more effective communication between those that need to learn and those who can teach them.
Mentorship can fill the need for new nurse leaders. Present leaders need to be encouraging mentoring opportunities and seeking those with leadership potential to enter into a mentorship. A mentor can encourage a mentee to consider the development of their interest in leadership.
Several nursing organizations have created programs for mentorship. They realize that these opportunities will enable diffusion of best practices, sharing of expertise and development of new leaders.
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The American Association of the Colleges of Nursing (AACN) has a list of nursing experts and yearly leadership development programs.
The National League for Nursing (NLN)’s Academy of Nurse Educators whose purpose is to mentor members in different programs.
The American Organization of Nursing Executives (AONE) created online learning communities that encourage collaboration, sharing of expertise, resources and support.
The American Academy of Nursing (AAN)’s program called Edge Runners are nurses who have created nursing innovations. Their information is available for the specific purpose of facilitating contact with other nurses who would like to learn more.
The American Nursing Association (ANA) this year passed a resolution to develop a mentoring program
The National Coalition of Ethnic Minorities Nurse Association (NCEMNA) has their well known and acclaimed Scholar program as well as other resources.
Mentorship and the development of mentoring skills need to be a focus in the future of nursing. Schools of nursing could encourage more expert nurses to become mentors, for example by granting graduate course credit for further education.
Mentorship creates synergy and along with technological capability can be easily expanded to address the challenges nursing in the US face in the years to come.
Sources:
http://rwjf.org/files/research/Future%20of%20Nursing_Leading%20Change%20Advancing%20Health.pdf
Building Successful Mentoring Relationships Canadian Nurse September 2010 Volume 106 Number 7 pp 34-35
http://www.rwjf.org/files/research/lewinwawcasestudies.pdf
Journal of Nursing Education Volume 46(4), Volume 49(6) pp 340-341
