Mentor's Mark

Create a Trail: A Call to Mentorship

Michele E. Gaguski, MSN, RN, AOCN^®
2004 Pearl Moore “Making a Difference” Award Winner
Oncology Clinical Nurse Specialist, Ocean Medical Center, Brick, NJ

Now, more than ever, a call for mentorship exists in oncology nursing. The need is so great for many reasons: the complex treatment regimens, the creation of novel therapies, more savvy consumers of cancer services, and shorter hospital stays with more acute patients, all coupled with a demand to work harder, smarter, and quicker. Oh, and did I forget to mention that there is a nursing shortage?

When contemplating the essence of mentorship, I often remember a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882): “Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” This very idea is the core of mentoring in nursing. Serving as a mentor means bringing new ideas to life, building partnerships, and creating innovative nursing practice along the way and to think anew and create a vision that embraces novice nurses into the profession. A mentor is a wise and sensitive trusted family friend, according to Homer’s The Odyssey (ONS, 2001). Mentors can be described as counselors, teachers, and advisors. If you have ever had a mentor, you know that it is an experience you never forget because it usually makes a dramatic difference in the way we practice nursing and relate to our colleagues.

The concept of mentoring is exemplified in ONS’s new Students Virtual Community. This Web site matches interested nursing students with oncology nurses as mentors. I first discovered the site as I was coaching a nurse extern on our oncology unit and immediately signed both of us up. The nurse extern and I completed the registration together and perused the site’s content. Mentoring can be used as a recruitment strategy to engage nursing students in thinking about oncology as their specialty, and it provides mentors with the opportunity to inform student nurses about why they chose oncology nursing! As oncology nurses, we need to highlight why we love what we do and the endless intangible gifts we receive every day from the patients in our care.

I currently have the honor of mentoring a master’s student enrolled in a clinical nurse specialist (CNS) program in the Midwest, and I love it. The relationship is approximately three months old, and I have been challenged by the thought-provoking questions presented to me by my student. I have answered questions extending from Rituxan^® (rituximab, Genentech Inc., South San Francisco, CA) adverse reactions and lymphedema management in the home setting to defining roles and writing a job description for an oncology CNS. The inquiries from my student have allowed me to think outside the box and make a positive difference in her career. I want her to feel comfortable with approaching me for guidance and acknowledge that she can lean on me when the mountain seems insurmountable. My student and I communicate by phone, e-mail, and regular mail. We both attended the ONS 29th Annual Congress in Anaheim, CA, where we met face-to-face for the first time.

So why should oncology nurses be committed to building mentoring relationships? Mentors are committed to the growth of the whole person, not just the menial day-to-day tasks. They are visionaries of the mentee’s capabilities and seek to place that person in positions that promote the greatest growth. Mentoring requires enthusiasm and commitment, time and effort, energy and sacrifice; if we all took up this calling, what a wonderful career nursing would be. Let us model clinical excellence, exemplify sensitive coaching behaviors, nurture trusting relationships, teach the art and science of oncology nursing with a strong passion, set the goals high and pursue them as a team, and, together, dream the impossible; only then will we be able to fully enrich the profession of oncology nursing. Are you ready to create your trail?

Reference

Oncology Nursing Society. (2001). Mentorship: Our commitment to our future [Video tape]. In the Power of presence boxed set. Pittsburgh, PA: Oncology Nursing Society. (Limited quantities are available from the Oncology Nursing Society, 125 Enterprise Drive, Pittsburgh, PA 15275)

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