Louann Breton no longer is a flight nurse, trading more than eight years in a helicopter for the emergency room. But as a mentor she still is lifting others up to the heights of their profession.

"Everyone says children are our future. It's the new people in our profession that are our future," Breton said. "If we can be good mentors to these people, they'll be good nurses and good peers … and want to stay in the profession."

Breton is known for her knack of tapping into nurses' strengths while getting to know them: their hobbies, families, likes and dislikes.

Of all the messages she sends, whether mentoring emergency medical technicians, paramedics or nurses, the most important, she said, is this: "You're never alone."

And from a philosophical standpoint: "You really need to do what you feel is the right thing. When you're having difficulty making a decision and you look to someone for help or guidance, it always comes down to, 'You need to do what you feel in your heart is the right thing.' "

Feelings, particularly feelings of inadequacy, are something Breton has helped nurses overcome every day in the two years since Methodist Medical Center began accepting graduate nurses in emergency/trauma services.

'We're a Level II. It's very busy and very high acuity," she said. "Just picking nursing as a profession is not something that you do. It's got to be something that you feel you really want."

Nonetheless, nurses new to the emergency department easily can be overwhelmed. She said that as they work through a crisis, their thoughts run along the lines of:

"Oh, my gosh, I've got all this responsibility and I'm being torn in five different directions. On my clinical rotations, I just had to focus on a couple of these patients. All of a sudden, my peer needs help over here because they've got a critical patient. I've got this. I've got a doctor over here asking me for this. I can't do this."

That is when Breton steps in and exercises the teamwork that makes the emergency department work so well. She sets talented but insecure nurses straight with compassion, patience, empathy and advice.

Breton said her career concern now is to maintain her skills and expertise, but that she, too, once was a staff nurse with more promise than proficiency. And that's what she shares with those she mentors. "You're looking at a nurse with 19 years of experience and comparing yourself, brand-new out of school. You can't do that."