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Within health care, for decades, we have had experienced people mentoring or precepting less experienced people. We have student nurses who are often in our organizations, students throughout the health care, whether they’re radiology students or laboratory students or physician residents. We are, in many ways, a school as well as a care provider.
And so part of– and I’m seeing this actually across the country– is because there is such a workforce shortage, more and more health care executives, whether they’re academic or not, are taking on a bigger role in training, developing, and preceptoring the future workforces. It is hard when we’re already short staffed on a unit.
And boy, there’s probably 100 nurses standing behind me that would say it’s very hard for me to mentor and train somebody when I’ve got a patient care load to take care of as well. But I do think it is an essential way to pass on what great care looks like, when you’ve worked side by side with somebody who has done it. They know how to deliver patient care, but they also know some of the tricks of the trade. They know how to stay organized, which is critically important. They know how to get orders processed more efficiently. They know how to collaborate with one another. They know how to speak to physicians and/or physician offices.
And so I do think, whenever possible, it is really a great idea to pair up more experienced people with less experienced people to continue that transfer of knowledge. Health care, because it is the business of human beings, taking care of human beings, you have to have all the academic and skills and training to become a health care provider. But you also have to know how to take care of people. And human beings, as we talked about earlier, are tricky.
And so really understanding how to have emotional intelligence and how to watch experience nurses or physicians or RAD techs in those examples where they are working with people, those are things that you can’t teach in a classroom or out of a book. Those are real life experiences where we’re modeling and mentoring the best way to connect and serve patients.
So I’m a huge proponent for taking on some of that. But we also have to then think about the impact of then, how do we make it doable for our more experienced staff? Maybe a little bit lighter workload on the days that we can do that. Also being clear on roles– here are the things the more experienced nurses are going to do, and the new nurses are going to preceptor or watch. Here are the things that we can throw people in right away and get them started on doing and learning. So that’s where we need the smart, experienced leaders to really understand, What are the right roles? How do we pass that information knowledge from one generation to another? and still provide great care.
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