Nurse Mentor

The stories I hear from my colleagues in academia with kids living at home are something else, especially if they are young. For those on tenure track, the pressure to succeed in the face of such uncertainty is staggering. Some places, like my home university, have extended tenure clocks for those who may need it and have mobilized support groups. There will be, of course, the inevitable faculty members who simply can't understand why non-tenured faculty on research tracks with children living at home are struggling so much. After all, in their day they did not have all the legal provisions and extra protections that young faculty have today. Or just put the kids on a schedule! Scheduling is the key to success in everything! Sound familiar?  Wouldn't you like those folks to see how working and homeschooling goes if their grandkids or grand nieces and nephews came over and spent a week with them? Faculty who think that way are thinking from a highly privileged place. No one

I've taught in nursing programs for 19 years now. I have had the privilege of supporting both male and female nurses alike at all levels, from the frontline provider through the faculty level.  During that time, I've noticed one key difference between male and female* nurses .  Male nurses ask to be nominated for various opportunities. Women wait to be recognized. There is no reason for this to happen. Those of us in positions to nominate people for opportunities or recognition should be more mindful of working toward a gender balance in our nomination practices. Our potential nominees also need to ask to be nominated. Don't think you aren't ready. Don't wait to be recognized.  Ask.  Sometimes people don't nominate you because they aren't aware of your work or accomplishments. Find people who will nominate you even when others say "you aren't ready." Asking to be nominated for awards is not being egotistical. It's saying the wor

Many faculty positions require a post-doc, but actually doing one isn't feasible for everyone. There are a lot of reasons not to do a post-doc. Here's a few core ones. It's Not Financially Feasible Post-doc salaries aren't always great. The minimum salary is $45,000. For many people who have already sacrificed for many years to finish their PhD, it's not possible to continue the sacrifice. Full time employment that capitalizes on the PhD credential may be the only alternative. It May Not Be Good for Career Progression, Depending on Your Age Nurses and midwives complete doctoral degrees at many ages. Candidates need to ask themselves if spending two more years in a post-doc is the right career move. Academic nursing, in particular, can have many career forms and depending on your life stage and goals, going right into a faculty position is a perfectly viable option. Programs of research can still be developed with this pathway through both internal and

Your patient satisfaction scores went up by two points this month. YAY! Your patient satisfaction scores went down three points the following month. Boo! Those monthly scores feel like an emotional roller coaster, right? Then you add on all the other relevant quality outcome measures your employer has decided are important and it can get even more crazy and complex. Depending on your manager, they either take them very seriously or they understand the complexities of measuring patient outcomes.  How do we handle all the new data coming at us more sanely?  Here's a solution. Statistical Process Control.   What is it? Here's a generally agreed upon definition: Statistical process control  (SPC) is a method of quality  control  which employs  statistical  methods to monitor and  control  a  process . This helps to ensure that the  process  operates efficiently, producing more specification-conforming products with less waste (rework or scrap). What SPC does is it tells

In 2019, we started a conversation about doing a Post-Doc (or not) . Life happens and so now I'm circling back to continue the conversation in 2020. A post-doctoral fellowship, for nursing, is an additional two to three years of training after you finish your PhD. A post-doc can be a great opportunity to build additional skills and expand your network of mentors. For example, if you did a qualitative dissertation then building your quantitative skills as they relate to your dissertation work is a logical next step in developing your program of research. A post-doc is also the perfect time to publish. Highly competitive candidates for faculty positions at top schools typically have between 5 and 10 publications resulting from their post-doc, sometimes more. To meet that goal, it is an ideal opportunity to go back to your papers that you wrote during your doctoral coursework and see which ones can be developed into papers.  Papers that demonstrate collaboration with your post

One of the biggest reasons why new nurses leave their first jobs is the culture around how mistakes are handled.  No one wants to work feeling like they can never make a mistake. In fact, most nurses are hyper-aware of the potential of making a mistake and the consequences to patients. We also know that nurses often catch mistakes before they become problematic, yet those rarely get rewarded. A punitive culture around errors is a by-product of both paternalism and maternalism. It is the parental like approach of punishment for the mistake, yet it is often the system that sets the nurse up for mistakes. Good systems look at the root causes of the mistakes and acknowledge that the person who committed the error has probably punished themselves enough. There's a healthy literature about nurses catching mistakes before they happen  and a growing body of literature on nurse surveillance for catching problems before they happen.  Essentially, the evidence is growing about how nurses