Re: Interview with educator

Dara Yastrzemski
Sunday, September 9, 2018, 8:15 PM

Hi Holly,
I found your discussion with the nurse educator to be very insightful. In your post, there is mention of
mentoring and the importance of the availability of a mentor for the novice nurse educator. I could not
agree more and believe that without the encouragement and connections that a mentor can establish, the
more stressful the new role can be. The other continuing theme in most of the interviews I read were the
stressors involved in starting a new role as a nurse.
Mentoring
Nurses are often tasked with precepting, supervising, and advising other nurses. For the novice nurse
educator, they are often left without senior nurse faculty to guide them and offer support. The role of
mentor facilities the transmission of knowledge and skills. This valuable insight allows for continual
feedback and evaluation, support, and role modeling. It is also of important to properly match mentor and
mentee. I recently had a significant mentoring relationship and as the mentee, I found this to be extremely
vital to be performance. Being aligned with a mentor, allowed me to understand my role and gave me the
confidence I needed to amalgamate my existing skills and apply them to my position as a new nurse
manager.
Expert to Novice
When beginning any new role in nursing, it is important to realize that there needs to be a transitional
period of adjustment and evaluation of practice. Often, the new nurse educator is not allowed the time
needed to adjust and absorb into the new position. These time constraints are related to the adjustment
period and the restrictions surrounding the foreign aspects of the position. This switch from expert
clinician to novice educator requires new skills that also require guidance. This switch often leads to
anxiety and potential burnout without the encouraging climate that should foster the transition to teaching
(Duphily, 2011). The novice nurse educator requires the support and encouragement from senior staff to
assimilate their role with their students as well as with other faculty.
Thanks again for a thought provoking look at the barriers for the new nurse educator.
Dara
Reference
Duphily, N.H. (2011). The experience of the novice nurse faculty in an associate degree education
program. Teaching and Learning in Nursing, 6(3), 124-130. doi:10.1016/j.teln.2011.01.002