“At a time when health care is experiencing unparalleled change, skillful mentors can provide stability while facilitating change in a positive and thoughtful manner, contributing to the development of the next generation of nursing care providers”.
While nursing is multifaceted with several opportunities and challenges, there is a fine line between enduring and enjoying one’s nursing practice.
Every day, I wonder what it will take to be successful in one’s chosen career path.
The question is – Is it lecturing, or preceptorship?
Coaching or Mentorship can guide one to success in nursing.
My focus is not to pit one approach against the other but rather to emphasize how critical mentorship is in the nursing profession.
In the last few years, our job, personal lives, interests, and endeavors have been affected and threatened by the pandemic. Although nurses have remained strong as individuals and as a unit, a tremendous number of practicing nurses have quit the profession for different reasons.
The resignation or quit rate that we see in nursing can be associated with several factors that predate the pandemic.
Scottie Andrew (2021) explained in his interview with Ellsworth that, it wasn’t unusual for US nurses to consider quitting even before the pandemic.
The main culprit identified were burnout, lack of support, feeling of isolation, and guilt (for not having the necessary resources to provide adequate care).
Traumatized and tired, nurses are quitting due to the pandemic – CNN
If seasoned nurses have these experiences in their practice, I can only imagine what the generation Y (Millennials) or the generation Z nurses are writing in their journals.
Although I have several stories from my personal experiences and stories from colleagues and students alike that detailed their experiences in their nursing journey, perhaps we can have more conversations around these in our future blogs.
Mentorship has been identified as a strategy for addressing most of the concerns that have been identified by nurses across different generations.
Gruber-Page (2016) explained that “At a time when health care is experiencing unparalleled change, skillful mentors can provide stability while facilitating change in a positive and thoughtful manner, contributing to the development of the next generation of nursing care providers”.
The time for change is now and we must be part of that change for it to be sustainable.
The phrase “nurses eating their young” is not acceptable anymore and we all must care for each other as we care for our patients.
FYNI has created an avenue for all of us to be a part of a mission that is greater than our individuality.
Through mentorship, we can improve young nurses’ experiences in nursing.
Be a Mentor or be Mentored.
References
- Scottie Andrew, C., 2021. Traumatized and tired, nurses are quitting due to the pandemic. [online] CNN. Available at: <https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/25/us/nurses-quit-hospitals-covid-pandemic-trnd/index.html> [Accessed 2 June 2022].
- Gruber-Page, M. (2016, July). The value of mentoring in nursing: An honor and a gift. In Oncology Nursing Forum (Vol. 43, No. 4, p. 420). Oncology Nursing Society.
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