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How important is mentoring in nursing? As many nurses
have long known and many hospital administrators are
learning, it's vital. And not everyone can do it.
"We're beginning to see how important mentoring
is and what happens when you don't have it," said
Joan Engebretson, Dr.PH, RN, associate professor at
the school of nursing at the University of Texas-Houston
Health Science Center. "It's from your mentor that
you learn the fine-tuned ins and outs of working in
an organized culture."
A mentor does more than teach skills and facts, she
said. True mentors serve as guardians who "bring
someone into a group to become a full-fledged member
of the group."
Good mentors don't preach, they listen, say nurses
who have both mentored and been mentored themselves.
They don't advise, they suggest various possibilities.
Most of all, they don't smother.
"They don't stand in your way of getting ahead,"
said Katherine Vestal, Ph.D., RN, president of Work
Innovations Inc., a health care consulting group. "I've
had many mentors in my life. The ones who have been
most effective are the ones who have shown me what to
do, then shown me what I could do."
Good mentors are often the more seasoned nurses in
the organization "who also have good attitudes,"
said Carol Ann Cavouras, MS, RN, president and owner
of Phoenix-based Lawrenz Consulting, which works with
acute care hospitals on staffing and scheduling issues.
But sometimes a mentor can be a peer. Marlene Roman,
MSN, RN, a medical/surgical clinical nurse specialist
at North Broward and Coral Springs Medical Center in
southern Florida and president of the Academy of Medical-Surgical
Nurses, remembers a fellow new graduate who supported
her in her first nursing job. "She was very smart,
and we helped each other," Roman said.
Vestal, Roman and other longtime nurses said they didn't
find their mentors through a formal matching program.
They chose them when they changed jobs, decided to go
back to school or needed to learn something new. Some
said they had several different mentors at the same
time they went to when they wanted help with various
aspects of their professions.
True mentoring relationships have to be spontaneous,
Engebretson said. "You could never systemize that
sort of wonderful mentor-protégé relationship."
But that doesn't mean a formally assigned mentor can't
help someone new to the job, she added, as long as both
understand they can be reassigned if the relationship
isn't working. "I think these structured programs
are really good at beginning a mentoring process,"
she said.
"One of the things about choosing each other is
that you grow to know each other," said Cecelia
Gatson Grindel, Ph.D., RN, associate director for the
undergraduate program at Georgia State University in
Atlanta and a founding member of the Academy of Medical-Surgical
Nurses. But taking time to get to know someone is a
luxury new graduates seldom have, she said, which is
why formal mentoring programs for new nurses are important.
Not everyone can be a good mentor, Engebretson said.
Sometimes mentors go into the relationship with unrealistic
expectations-that they will mold a new person, that
the new nurse will always come to them for help. But
good mentors understand that their mentees will eventually
become peers and will probably go on to new mentors.
"No matter who your mentors are, you almost always
outgrow them at some point," Vestal said. "Mentors
may even end up working for the person they mentored."
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