Texas Health Southwest Looks To Inspire New Leaders
A pilot for a formal program creating nurse mentors – meant to inspire new leaders and keep them at Texas Health — starts this month at Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Southwest Fort Worth.
“We recognized during our Magnet® site visit we had several nurses who were working on master’s degrees or had completed them and talked about their leadership growth,” said Megan Carter, D.N.P., R.N., NEA-BC, associate chief nursing officer. “While we may not have formal leadership roles available to fill often, we can still actively mentor and grow these clinical leaders in a meaningful way to prepare them for the next step in their career journey. The literature is clear that mentoring is a powerful retention tool in nursing.”
At the same time, the system’s Journey to Clinical Excellence Council wanted to improve the utilization of the My Career Journey career development tool on MyTHR.org, said Kimberly Williams, M.S.N., RNC-MNN, program manager, Clinical Excellence.
The tool, which is powered by Fuel50, includes an extensive mentoring component that allows users to access a pool of employees who are willing to offer support and guidance to users at any stage of their careers. My Career Journey also offers four self-assessments that help users determine their personal career values; their talents and areas for further development; what interests shape their careers; and their current and future career needs and priorities.
“These assessments provide crucial talking points for career conversations with managers and mentors,” said Mark Morales, chief learning officer.
The pilot program also aligns with a systemwide nursing initiative of retaining and developing key employees.
The goal is to have each nurse leader – Carter, Chief Nursing Officer Gretchen Hunt, M.S.N., R.N., ACNS-BC, NEA-BC, Williams and others — mentor one of the nurses who have applied to be mentees, Carter said. “We’ll do it for six months, pause and do a formal check-in.”
The pilot is formally being led by a sub-committee of Leadership Collaboration Council as part of the Shared Governance and Magnet framework.
Evidence-based guidelines
A total of 18 mentees have been assigned to 15 mentors. The mentors have been trained on evidence-based guidelines for structuring mentoring meetings. They were intentionally assigned mentees who are not in their area. For example, the Women’s Services director is paired with an Emergency Department nurse and Carter is mentoring telemetry nurse Phillip King, B.S.N., R.N.
King, who is one of two full-time charge nurses in telemetry, has been with Texas Health since 2019 and has been a nurse for 10 years. He’s working through the My Career Journey assessments now.
“That really does set your blueprint,” King said. “After completing it, you’ll have a better understanding of your own goals.”
He said mentees can look at feedback from prior managers and think through their strengths. King has been considering whether to pursue healthcare administration or continue on the clinical side. This process is already motivating him to move ahead.
Melanie Nolty, B.S.N., R.N., C-ELBW, also is a mentee. She has been a neonatal intensive care unit nurse for 16 years, 15 of them at Texas Health Southwest, and recently became lead charge nurse for the day shift.
She requested Hunt as her mentor because of her leadership during the pandemic.
“One of the things that I look forward to learning from Gretchen is how she faced adversity and was able to maintain resilience for nurses when we were faced with so much that was unknown,” Nolty said. “I want to know what kept her full of hope when everything around us seemed hopeless.
“I know that in my time as a leader I will face uncertainty, and there may be times I don’t have answers to questions, but I want to learn exactly what it takes to stay strong and lead even when things may be scary and the future seems unstable.”
Published October 4, 2022
