Developing Expert Clinicians into Clinical Faculty: A Mentoring-Teaching Experience

Purpose: To prepare expert nurse clinicians to become educators through participation in a clinical faculty academy and mentorship program.  The aim of the study was to explore the transition from the role of nurse clinician to nurse educator and the influence of mentoring in this process. Globally, nurse educators have identified the faculty shortage as central to the evolving nursing shortage. Recruitment and retention of highly qualified individuals, from diverse backgrounds, to teach students in clinical settings is challenging.  Educating practicing nurse experts about the complexity of the clinical academic environment requires a multifaceted approach.  Mentoring opportunities that are laissez-faire provide little structure for the mentee, whereas formalized mentoring experiences with clearly defined goals are far more beneficial to novice educators.

Methods: A mixed-methods design was used.  Institutional review board approval was obtained.  A diverse group of participants were selected from a competitive pool of applicants to a structured training and mentoring academy.  Nurse clinicians participated in the Eastern Shore Faculty Academy and Mentoring Initiative (ES-FAMI), a regional hybrid educational program, incorporating a partnership of three schools of nursing in the region.  The ES-FAMI experience included face-to-face meetings, interactive online modules,  simulated clinical teaching experiences, and mentoring experiences. Upon completion of the didactic program, academy graduates completed the Academy Experience Evaluation (AEE) tool electronically through a learning management system.  The AEE included 13 multiple choice items on a 5-point Likert scale (higher scores indicating greater satisfaction) and four additional open-ended questions.  Space was included after each question for comments.  Four focus groups were held annually to evaluate the program.  Additionally, all participants who had completed the ES-FAMI course were invited to return for a mentorship session and mentorship focus group.  A focus group methodology was selected for data collection since it offers interaction among group members who can provide in-depth data, not always elicited through surveys and interviews. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics.

In order to enhance and expand the findings of the larger study, and to provide a broader meaning of the experience related to the quantitative study, a Heidegerrian, interpretive, perspective was chosen for qualitative data analysis.  With participant permission, mentorship focus group conversations were audio-taped and transcribed.  The interpretive analytic method of Dieklemann, Allen, and Tanner (1989) method was used.  This interpretive method involved a hermeneutic research team whose goal was to provide written interpretations of the groups’ discussions. The focus group question was limited to one question with two parts, with follow up questions and probes asked throughout the session.

Results: Over a three year period, a total of six academies with 32 participants were held. Twenty-six of the 32 participants completed the AEE for an 81.3% response rate.  Thirty (93.8%) of the participants were female.  Slightly more than half of the participants were Caucasian (n=18, 56.3%), with 37.6% (n=12) of academy graduates were from diverse, underrepresented groups including male and non-white racial backgrounds.   Age ranged from 23 to 56 years with a mean age of 38.79 (SD = 8.48).  At the time of academy participation, most participants had no clinical teaching experience.  To date, 25 of 32 academy graduates have taught a clinical course for one of the partner schools.

Responses on the AEE revealed an overall positive experience with the ES-FAMI program. Of the multiple choice items, mean scores ranged from 4.40(+.50) to 4.76(+.52).  The highest scoring items on the AEE related to applicability of the modules to clinical faculty role, simulation experience preparing for clinical faculty role, and ability to identify potential problematic student issues.  In open-ended responses, participants identified mentoring opportunities as integral to their learning.

In the mentoring focus group, nurse clinicians provided detailed first-person descriptions of their fears concerning student problems, their self-perceived ability to teach in a clinical setting and ability to adequately evaluate nursing students. Emergent themes included: Theme 1: Collaborating with peers.  This theme depicted the teamwork that ensued as participants helped each other and eventually developed an informal network of support.  Theme 2: Putting it all together.  This theme described the mentor/mentee relationship as integral to participant’s personal transition in becoming educators. Theme 3: Mentorship as a sounding board, identified participants’ own cognitive and emotional search as they thought about their teaching future, and their expectations. Theme 4: Learning is continuous, focused on participants’ desire to continue the mentorship process.

Conclusion: The findings of this study have global implications for nursing education. Helping clinicians actualize the faculty role through education and mentoring partnerships not only is a personal gain, but also provides the academic setting with a pool of talented clinical educators.   We have found on a local and regional level, a structured mentorship format strengthens the transition from clinician to nursing academia. In teaching today’s students, participants found they had to learn new skills, develop new expectations, and adjust previous expectations. The themes identified, demonstrated this push and pull in the mentorship process, but also provided a picture of what happens when mentorship works.