[Music]
Welcome to this episode of the NLN podcast Nursing EDge Unscripted the Surface track and thank you for joining us. This episode is entitled, "The Depth and Breadth of Mentorship: Exploring Informal and Formal Connection. Today we will talk with two special people, mother and daughter, about their professional growth in nursing both together and individually and how mentorship can serve as a key ingredient to create a meaningful and productive career in nursing. So first let
me welcome Dr. Susan Bindon. Dr. Bindon is the associate professor and the associate dean for faculty development at the University of Maryland School of Nursing in Baltimore, Maryland. Dr. Bindon also directs the Institute for Educators and serves as the program director for the Teaching and Nursing and Health Professions certificate. Dr. Bindon provides professional development for both clinical practice and academic health care professionals. Also joining us today I'd like to
welcome Dolly Bindon. Dolly is currently working as a bedside nurse in the Intensive Care Unit at St. Joseph Hospital in Denver. She has a BA in Spanish language a BS in microbiology and a BSN from the University of Maryland School of Nursing in Baltimore. She is certified in Progressive Care Nursing and Cardiac Medicine and she currently serves as a charge nurse preceptor and clinical instructor for BSN students.
So I just want to extend a warm welcome thank you, Dolly and Susan, for joining us today. It's really happy to be here. Great. So I want to just dive right into our conversation. Rachel and I are looking forward to this and this conversation today is super special to us because we have this rare and unique opportunity to talk with a mother and daughter. Right. So Susan
and Dolly. Both nurses from a long line of family of nurses so I want we want to hear a little bit more about that and additionally, Dolly is coming to us from the practice side and Susan is really coming to us from the academic side so we have these this mother-daughter duo and these perspectives that will come from, in nursing, from practice and academics and which is a really important partnership in health care that Rachel
and I talk about all the time. So we want to ask if you would share a little bit about your roles in your respective organization. What is filling your cup right now professionally and what are maybe some ways that you're partnering together? Well I certainly someday hope to have a CV as impressive as my mom's but for now I work as a bedside nurse in the ICU at St. Joseph's Hospital in Denver.
I've been there for a few years and have really enjoyed learning and growing in that role. I think I really share my mom's love of teaching and learning and I think what is filling my cup right now what I really love the most is working with new graduate nurses or
student nurses. I take a lot of students as a clinical instructor several times a year in the ICU and that is just so exciting because they bring so much energy and openness and enthusiasm for nursing that I get to help foster so I really love that and yeah that's my that's what I do. It's wonderful Dolly and what about you Susan?
What do you want to do these days? Just listening to Dolly that fills my cup up because that's where I started a long long time ago is with the students and I just loved it and now my my kind of loves have braided into this wonderful role. I'm the associate dean for faculty development at the University of Maryland School of Nursing. I've been there about 12 years and I get to teach and I get to coach and I get to help develop others and
that's just a dream come true. I mean, it's the first time that position's been made available at the school so I'm really lucky to be in the right place the right time, which is a big secret to my career I think too, but what fills my cup is is exactly that just seeing faculty kind of set a goal figure out how to get there meet that goal and to be able to help them do that facilitate that growth, is just, is just thrilling so I feel very lucky to be able to do that every day.
Awesome and I'm just excited about your role at the University of Maryland School of Nursing because I know you've been doing aspects of that role informally for many years for all of us and we spoke about that with you, Rachel and I last time we met. Just those hallway conversations: the coaching, the the guidance, the mentorship that you provide many people at the school of
nursing and beyond. I know that including Dolly obviously following in your footsteps so I just it's wonderful that you can formalize that role a bit and especially you being the first person that you get to really help shape it and I think that's exciting and I remember one of my first formal roles in a teaching was with you in the new grad residency program much like when I was kind of in that transition professionally just like Dolly is you know moving
from bedside more into teaching but still at the bedside and I was able to have that inaugural role as a clinical coach and you helped shape that and shape me in being able to define that role and
it was very exciting. Oh that's wonderful and in that vein and this may come up again later but a wonderful mentor, Dr. Trish Morton, helped me many years ago help us find she calls finding it finding your X. And she just continues to say, what do you want to do, what do you want to do, but you know think more, think more and what do you want to be the best at in this school?Where the city or the state or the world? What's your
X? And trying to figure out what the X is and then moving toward it is super exciting and I maybe that was the beginning of your pathway to your X Michelle because it's worked out well. It really is. It really was and but when you say X it makes me think of algebra and then I start to sweat, now I've got to do like algebraic equation and I get a little uncomfy. Well can you share with us a little bit
about how you might be partnering? What are some things that you the two of you because I've heard, you know little things here and there that you do together so how might you be reaching out?
I think a lot of what we do is kind of an informal partnership, testing the waters with each other and just talking about nursing and what we're doing and what's next, what's on the horizon but I think more formally, my mom actually helps kind of guide me through the process of giving a presentation at a regional conference a few years ago. That was really exciting. I do I think most of what we do is informal but it's been really fun to do things
here and there like you said. Yeah. I talk a lot and Dolly and I love that we can start in the middle of a story right we don't have to give all the
background to a nursing story. We can just call each other and say guess what happened today and we can start in the middle and we understand and it's just it's a beautiful thing at least from my perspective but that wasn't helping me for since she was probably five or six listening to hundreds if not millions of PowerPoints and ideas and things and giving me phenomenal feedback. You know, too deep, too superficial, I'm lost.
So what those kinds of very honest and helpful feedback so um I take that all into consideration to make what I'm doing more relevant and so Dolly thank you for that. Yeah, hopefully in my teen years I wasn't too mean about it but That's what we call context, Doll, that's the context. Generationally too I know I'm raising some Gen Z's at home and they give some really good generationally relevant feedback, we'll just call it that. It's good. It keeps me keeps me smart, keeps
me fresh. Yeah, I call it data mining, right, I'm just data mining as I'm listening to Dolly and her friends. It's super helpful so you know when I when I'm sitting here and I'm listening to you Dolly and Susan what I think is so special about this not only is this the generational and the mom and the daughter but also it speaks the important I think ingredient of mentorship which is trust
and rapport. We talk a lot about mentorship and nursing education and nursing practice whether which side of the bridge we're on and as much as we talk about it I still think we have a lot of growth to do it well. Not everybody gets the benefit of having this close human to shepherd them through the process whether they're on the academic or the practice side or trying
to bridge them and yet we should all have. I shouldn't say should - Michelle is on a great path of me to eliminate the word should for my vocabulary. Lecture and should are now on this list of eliminating that from my vocabulary. Everyone needs someone... a close trusted human to shepherd them and many of them right because we can't be all things to all
people. So I'm curious from your experience with each other what nods can we take from what you all have learned about this trust in the rapport that we could bring to our professional mentoring or relationships where it's not between generations of a family member or close trusted human. That is a really long thought. How's that land on you? Go ahead, Mom. Yeah, it's vital. Trust...
trust is everything, right? We can't grow if we can't trust the situation that we're in and Rachel I think you're a thousand percent right. I try to...I'll use Dolly as an example. I try to help her learn by I call the wisdom of my mistakes, right? But it's not about me. It's about Dolly or whoever I'm working with so helping them understand that conversations will come up or I might not agree with your idea or you might have to change course a little bit.
It's only because of respect and trust and I can't...I cannot emphasize those enough. It's not about competition. It's not about learning the hard way. It's just about trust and respect. do think that might get lost sometimes because academia is a competitive place and practice is too and time is short and emotions are high. But it has to come back
to that. I like what you're saying Susan too about making sure it's really about and you know when you're describing your relationship with Dolly it's about Dolly. Her needs, where she is right now, while you might be drawing from your experiences, it still needs to apply to the person that you're mentoring or talking to. It has to be
relevant for them. You can't just say, well, I would do this or you should, that dirty word you should do this but like just meeting people where they are I think is helpful and important. Dolly, 'm curious to hear your perspective on... I have also been on the receiving end of your mom's mentorship and it has been career shaping and and transformational for me so
I'm curious. I can only imagine the mentorship experience you've had with her and I'm curious to hear from you what have you taken from that and how are you applying that to the mentoring relationships that you're trying to create in your spaces. Yeah, lucky me. I agree, lucky you, lucky me. I think her advice and guidance has been invaluable in every aspect of my life but
particularly professionally. She's been able to introduce me to so many people doing incredible work, which I think is invaluable always and then beyond that, I mean, I am not a particularly decisive person as she can attest, so finding my X has looked a little bit like finding my pqrst
you know and on and on. Having that having someone who really knows your field and is able to give you the freedom and knowledge to explore everything for me from public policy to academia to bedside to you know all of those things has been great. And then for my own mentorship and mentoring others, which I'm finally transitioning into a little bit, has been exciting. I've been part of a couple professional mentorship programs and they kind of fizzle out a little bit.
I think that what you said Dr. Onello is is totally true. It's just it needs to be based on mutual trust and respect and I think what I have started to do a little bit and what I have tried to guide new nurses that I work with is to find that person that you respect that you look up to that you love their practice if they're a year ahead of you, two years ahead of you, ten years ahead of you, and say hi,
can we get coffee? Can I ask you about this? Do you have 25 minutes to chat with me next Tuesday about what I want to do next? Usually people like being asked. I think a little bit more onus on a mentee is maybe key for a successful relationship professionally.
I so appreciate you sharing that Dolly and I think you're on to something really important because when I think about the times that I've been involved in mentorship programs whether I'm in it as a recipient or participant or I'm part of the team building the mentoring program a lot of times it's - okay, here's your mentor, here's your mentee. Get to know each other. I think we need to radically shift that paradigm.
Exactly what you're talking about Dolly because how do we help the mentees and the mentors find and connect in a way that helps them identify people who have lived experiences that will help shape them, that can develop the trust, the rapport, the respect? Susan, I see you nodding up and down. What your thoughts
on that? And especially in your role, you're involved a lot in mentorship and mentoring and what are your thoughts on our current paradigm of how we structure mentoring and where we could go to improve it? Yep, I can't agree enough that it's easy to say it's bi-directional, it's a two-way street. We know that, but how to make that happen, how to infuse that, give that a dose of energy every two weeks, one month, six weeks, whatever that structure is. The structure
is important of course. The process is important. Keeping your eye on the goal is important. But intentionally putting some milestones in there, maybe some key questions, maybe some deliverables along the way, something I've got for both people because Dolly I think you're right. There's that wonderful energy and then if there's a disagreement or a tough spot that does seem to fizzle, especially if it's optional or too organic. I think we need to dose it
a little bit along the way. I think the one thing that Dolly said that is important I heard you say Dolly that one thing that your mom has done for you is to connect you with many people. Say you're working on a public policy paper for grad school and you know Susan can connect you to a public policy person and so on and so on depending on what initiative or project you're working on or what questions you might have or what letter of the alphabet you're
trying to figure out. But those connections and those people that's where I think sometimes that mentorship that more of that organic mentorship can initially happen, but then of course if it's put within that structure of of having some guidelines and some follow-up and some frequency that can be really helpful but I think building that network where you can find those folks that you can reach out to is really helpful. Kind of keeping good
company, right? The more good company you keep the more good conversation you're going to have. I think the more can fall into place there too. I think some mentoring humility because Michelle sometimes you realize, I'm not your best person but you know who is right and making that connection. It's not like an off you go connection, it's a let me know what you discover and come back and share with me connection. Having the humility to do that is important.
That's great. That makes me think of when students would come to me about needing help in dosage calculation. I'm like, no, that's not me, but I know someone who can and her name is Dr Rachel Onello. Her office is right over there and she can help you in a hot minute. Exactly. You know, Susan, you said something a moment ago about the competitiveness of the profession and it made me think back to and Michelle and I talk about Simon Sinek and and Brene Brown all
the time. I don't know if you've heard their recent podcast. They got on this idea of all three of them just jumping on each of their podcasts so I don't know which podcast it fell under, but it was one of their three podcasts. Adam Grant, Simon Sinkek, Brene Brown got on talking and they were talking about how when we think about developing our people and how we evaluate their performance for the most part in industries the evaluation process is about individualism
not teamwork. I'm going to say something spicy. You all know I like to put some spice
into the conversation. It might turn up the heat on this because this may land for some folks and in different ways but when I heard that and thought about that and then in the context of this conversation I think it also is pertinent to when we think about shaping and reshifting our paradigm on mentorship because if we are rewarding and evaluating people on individualism within teamwork efforts I think it can make an impetus, it's not an
impetus, right, it puts a barrier to really genuine authentic mentoring that helps the mentee because I can think of situations where a mentor driven by the individualism of evaluation methodologies of their performance may shape the mentoring or their involvement based on that rather than the best interest of the mentee. I think there's some connection there what are your thoughts? I think you're right. I think there's some reality in there so you know let's just
make an example, simple example. If the mentor thinks the mentee should write an article. There's that should word again, right. So push, push, push, push, push and who actually ends up doing the writing and what's the goal and what did the mentee get out of the process? I don't know if that stays true along the way or if it's just so outcome driven that the the learning is is kind of
skipped if you will. But it one thing I've noticed in academia and this is maybe an example a little bit different, but the idea of collaborative testing and collaborative quizzing so the students work together towards a goal and that's part of their grade. Anyways and so they all contribute and learn to work together so that hopefully the competition
at least within the group is a little less. Maybe among the groups it's high but we've seen some nice kind of anecdotal results with trying some of those things out in the academic setting so yeah I think I'll leave it there but there's huge value in kind of turning down the competition a little bit and focusing on the learning and the growth. Yeah, that's interesting to think about how to kind of evaluate a mentor-mentee relationship
as a team. I don't know. It sounds like there's things to dig into there but I don't know that I have that solution just yet. But I'm scrolling for that podcast as soon as we're done I want to hear. Yeah it's interesting. It got me thinking about just in terms of...an and I'm not going to pull away from our mentoring focus...but in academia of how when we think about our annual evals and how we're evaluated on our performance. What
are we measuring? Are we measuring individualism solely or are we also measuring things that help really build teamwork and help us bring in the next generation to build them up and really think about succession planning and the team and the culture rather than the just just the individual? That's really interesting that
you say that. Actually at my work we've been kind of playing with the idea of group mentoring and so it's it is much less focused on one-on-one conversation and guidance but the goal is to help with retention obviously but also with decreasing burnout with really creating a culture of community.
It doesn't feel quite like the mentoring we're talking about but it certainly has helped a lot of our new grad nurses and they are spending time with people a few years ahead of them or a few steps ahead of them in practice so I think there's something there for sure. I was just thinking I'm glad Dolly because I was just thinking in
practice I'm like that happens too. In practice, as a nurse, you're often evaluated with your own individual performance but there's so much of what we do it's not individual, it's interprofessional, it's intra-professional and so this idea of this shifting or including maybe not just moving completely away from that but including some of this group mentorship because when you're speaking to a group that one person that pipes up and asks that
really that question that's been bugging them and then everybody else had that same question. So now you can have this conversation that's more meta conversation about the experience or the thing whatever is running for the group or for that one brave person that spoke up but now you're covering a lot more ground and now you're creating that trust to be like oh he spoke up so I can speak up and this this space was held for that. Those are my reflections hearing
what you were saying Dolly. I think that can be really helpful if it's done well and you've got someone who can hold the space for that. I can tell you I was able to see some wonderful leaders at University of Maryland Medical Center, really holds space for nurses to speak up and to share what was happening in a group setting. You can tell that they felt empowered to do that because they were respected and it was kind of a form of mentorship in leadership and role modeling.
I think that's great, I appreciate that. I also think there's an element of mentoring that is perhaps maybe underemphasized or underrecognized which is the indirect mentoring that happens when you may not be in a direct relate mentoring relationship with that person but you see their work, you follow their work from a distance, and they serve as a role model and a mentor for you in that capacity. I think recognizing that is a valid form
of maybe mentorship at a distance. I don't know what that term would be but I think helping us emphasize that and see that helps our faculty and our clinical practice partners realize how important dissemination is and to get their ideas out there and to serve as a role model and recognize that when we are disseminating and we're putting our work in and different aspects on a platform that there is impact for others that
can serve in a mentoring role. Rachel, just this morning I read an article in Nursing Education Perspectives and I noticed a friend's name and I wrote to her and I said congratulations on your lovely article. It's going to help me with my work, thank you. And she wrote back and said actually I
was dissertation chair. This was my student. I'll pass this great news on to them and so just that little tiny circle and that circle will grow but that's exactly what we should be doing and so that, that PhD student, I hope that landed nicely on them this morning too, knowing that their work's being read and being being used so yeah and I keep coming back to this when I'm in this conversation. What keeps running for me is this paradigm shift and I know I'm guilty of
this. How often do I think of disseminating as I gotta hit my yeah my scholarly productivity right? I gotta hit this and that to get this disseminated, but shifting this thinking of how is this really serving to perhaps mentor at a distance or perhaps really just like it did in that exact example for you Susan is it sparked something that then leads to more sparks or a little kindling of
a fire. That's right. Cheering for each other, challenging and then I say can't wait for the next one meaning like, keep up your good work. Someone's listening, someone cares.
Yeah. That's a strong reframe for me right now like actively happening with my scholarship because I know I've worked with Susan on this and through my DNP work and you just feel like sometimes the active scholarship can feel a little heavy a little hard a little challenging but to reframe it to be like, I want to get this information out in hopes that somebody can get something, you know, like you said, set a spark.
It can help them in their work or it can help them in their everyday work, not only their scholarship but just maybe they're to get over a little hurdle in their course or in their program and you just never know. I don't think of scholarship in that way, so now I can think of it as maybe a piece, a shiny piece of mentoring from a distance and for someone to write and say I put your paper as a reference in my course, that's nice. That's great to hear, just little things
like that so we can kindle each other. I think it's just part of our responsibility and part it's a fun thing to do too. And it comes back to this reframe from individualism to team work, right? To the team. It doesn't have to necessarily be the person that's four doors down from you at your institution. There's a larger team at play here. I like it. So we've been talking about professionally where everybody is and I'd like to know a little
bit about maybe where you're going. What we talked about, what is filling your cup right now? What might be filling your cup with in the next couple of years looking down the road because I think that's a big part of mentorship is to not only help someone where they are in the moment but help them lift up their head their gaze just enough
to be able to see a little bit ahead. I know Susan you have helped me personally and professionally with that as well so what what's on your horizons if you're able to look up that far? Mine? You want to start with me? Yeah this was a this was a good reflection question for
me. Very good and I was thinking like how did I get here and I always say I got to here one conversation, one phone call, one email, one meeting at a time, right, one step at a time even though the X is way in front of me, one little sidewalk block at a time is how you get in
here. I think what's next is to keep doing that but I think what I'd love to be able to influence is this faculty shortage I think is huge on my mind and on my heart and it's it's here, it's ongoing, it's here to stay for the moment so anything I can do to help people fall in love with being a nurse educator either in practice setting for nursing professional development or in the academic setting. I hope to do that whether it's in front of the scenes or behind the scenes but
that's my drive right now. That's where I'd like to put my skills, KSAs, network to good use and and to help impact the faculty shortage so that's my goal. I love that Susan. Are you going to be up for a third conversation where we could talk about falling in love with nursing education? Yes, absolutely! I already have the title!
We might need two hours for that one but yes, that sounds like a long conversation and watching Dolly do that is just like, it's the thrill of my life and so that's where I want to put my efforts, both upcoming faculty and faculty who are yet to develop to the next level whatever that is. That's my goal, that's my dream. We are so lucky to have you and I don't know, I mean, watching my mom work and
be in her element is just so inspiring. she handles it with grace and ease and makes everything look super easy so that's
really wonderful. As far as me, I am in grad school right now to be a family nurse practitioner so I have really loved my growth and learning and experience in the ICU but I'm really looking forward to something that I've missed for the last couple years which is just really educating patients and families and partnering with them really well to help manage their health at home.
I'm looking forward to being able to do that again so maybe it's similarly one conversation at a time but I'm looking forward to that. That's beautiful and you know that love of teaching Dolly that you have it shows up right with your patients, with your patients families, in communities
with students, learners, mentees. It can show up in all these little nooks and crannies so I look forward to you growing in that role with your graduate work and reaching people in that way and really activating your love of teaching in that way because that's...well...we're going to have a whole year of talking about love of teaching because I think there's a lot that we could bolster patient care, right. It sounds like a season four
theme. Season four, okay perfect. I've been looking for a theme so done. Done. Love it. It's everything. Well Dolly, Susan thank you so much for taking your time to share with us your experiences and mentoring and sharing with
us. Thank you. I'll leave it at that because I don't have the words to actually communicate and articulate exactly what your influence both seeing both of you together and that relationship and Susan your influence on those you've touched, Michelle and I included. There's not a way to articulate other than thank you. So thanks for being here. Oh thanks for having us. Thank you. What a treat. Thanks for having us. Thank you for joining us on this episode of NLN
Nrsing EDge Unscripted Surface. We hope you join us next time. Until then, remember, whether your water is calm or choppy, stay connected, get vulnerable, and dare to go beneath the surface.