Course Outcome
The course outcome is to apply appropriate leadership and management principles in designing, coordinating, managing and advocating for meeting the complex health care needs of individuals, families and groups in various phases of the life span. This is done through mentoring in which mentors are expected to apply leadership and management principles.
Relationship between Leadership and Mentoring
According to Grossman as cited in Vann (2012), the mentoring process in the nursing field includes a guided experience that is either informally or formally assigned over the period that is mutually agreed on in order to empower the mentor so that the mentee develops personally and professionally within the auspices of a caring, collaborative, culturally competent, and respectful environment. This way, mentoring encourages collaboration and leadership development. A mentor in nursing refers to a preceptor, supervisor, coach, adviser, assessor, and teacher. This means that the mentor takes the leadership role and thus has to be an effective leader in order to mentor his mentees. Mentoring is carried out both on new and experienced nurses in order to help them resolve the various issues faced in the profession. With appropriate mentorship, all nurses including the newly hired ones are able to fulfil the complex health needs of their patients. This is through the mentor’s roles of advising, role modeling, connecting, teaching, and coaching the mentees/ nurses to various networks.
Through the relationship between a mentor and mentee, the mentees or nurses learn new skills and learning experiences that help them in handling complex situations. They are also introduced to networks of colleagues who provide the nurses with new professional opportunities and challenges. Through mentoring, nurses practice to the full extent of their training and education, achieve higher training and education levels, be full partners with other health care professionals, and have better information infrastructure and data collection for effective workforce policy making and planning (Mariani, 2012). They are also able to attend to all needs of their patients and their families. According to Vann (2012), it is through mentoring that leadership development and collaboration are encouraged. This happens when the nurses are developed to be able to assume leadership roles in the future. Mentoring should therefore be provided to nurses at all leadership levels to develop leadership competencies.
The mentoring exercise is successive when done in collaborative environment by developing partnerships within and beyond the health care environment. Mentoring does not only require collaboration between the mentor and the mentee but also with the patients and their families in order to understand their health care needs. With effective mentor-mentee relationships, health care organizations and professionals benefit greatly. While the mentor should be highly knowledgeable in the field of nursing, the mentee should show willingness to accept constructive feedback while working under the direction of the mentor (Wilson, Sanner & McAllister, 2010). This is the case of the leader and his followers as the leader should be effective when influencing and encouraging his followers to do as required.
Personal Reflection of Clinical Experience
Through my clinical experience with leadership and mentoring opportunities as a mentee, I have learned that the first step is building a close relationship with the mentor. Even though the mentor assumes the leadership role, he should not focus on how to use the power to demand respect but rather demand respect through his level of knowledge and how he conducts the mentoring process. I learnt this from the RNS and BSNs who assisted me throughout my clinical rotations. I was mentored in every task I carried out because the nurses assigned to me as my preceptors were very beneficial. I have also learned that all nurses are obligated to mentor the nurses coming after them. This was from the help of the experienced nurses who rendered their help even though they were not assigned to help me. They felt obligated to help me by sharing the knowledge acquired from their experiences.
From the mentoring process, I had a learning log to fill the clinical tasks I was working on, my weaknesses and preceptor’s input. I shared the prepared report with my mentors to assess my level of performance and thus rate my improvement. This gave the mentors a basis of helping me make more improvements in areas I was still weak. I was informed of the importance of requesting for clarification so that my improvement was not only based on the made accomplishments but on understanding all the tasks I was assigned. In addition, my mentors ensured that all interventions were evidence based and centered on the patients. I also learned the importance of critical thinking to handle all complex issues in nursing. I also had a chance to interact with experienced nurses and other physicians and this taught me the importance of team work.
Take Away
According to Vann (2012), nurses are responsible to help the new nurses become oriented or in other times take formal responsibilities of being a teacher or preceptor. This is done to have the experienced nurses train the less experienced ones to be exceptional healthcare professionals. Through the mentoring process, power is shared since the new and less experienced nurses are empowered through acquisition of more knowledge. I have also learned that the mentoring process should be done for a certain purpose. The outcome in my case is ensuring that the mentored nurses meet the complex health care needs of individuals, families and groups in various phases of the life span. I also understand that critical thinking is very important in nursing in order to deal with the challenging tasks.
References
Mariani, B. (2012). The effect of mentoring on career satisfaction of registered nurses and intent to stay in the nursing profession. Nursing Research and Practice. Retrieved from http://www.hindawi.com/journals/nrp/2012/168278/.
Race, T. K., & Skees, J. (2010). Changing tides: Improving outcomes through mentorship on all levels of nursing. Critical Care Nurse Quarterly, 33(2), 163-174.
Vann, K. (2012). Mentoring: Creating tomorrow’s nurse leaders today. New Hampshire Nursing News, 16-17.
Wilson, A. H., Sanner, S., & McAllister, L. E. (2010). An evaluation study of a mentoring program to increase the diversity of the nursing workforce. J Cult Divers., 17(4), 144-150.
