Mentorship as Medicine: Healing Nurse Fatigue Through Connection

It seems counterintuitive that doing more would decrease fatigue, yet it’s commonly accepted in arenas other than the workplace.

If you are exhausted, exercise can give you energy.

If you are stressed, being focused on a hobby or cleaning your house can make you feel better (so I hear).

If you complete a mentally demanding task, moving around can restore you.

What’s interesting is that this also translates when feeling overwhelmed at your healthcare job.

One “activity” that promotes satisfaction and combats compassion fatigue is mentorship. This is true for both the role of the mentor and the mentee.

It makes sense that a mentee would benefit from feeling supported, having someone who has already been through it help them navigate the stormy waters of being a nurse. But what about the role of the mentor, how can doing one more thing have a positive effect on job satisfaction and energy levels?

This is a question that I pondered while preparing a presentation on leadership and mentoring. There is a large body of work outlining mentorship in Fortune 500 companies and corporate America but where does it fit in the world of nursing?

It starts by examining what mentorship is and what it isn’t. Mentorship is being a “catalyst for another’s continuous journey toward success.” Doesn't that sound lovely?

Mentorship is about prioritizing the objectives and goals of the mentee and listening for understanding. It is believing in them more than they believe in themselves and inspiring them toward greater achievements. It is letting them identify a plan and then helping them revise it with your knowledge and previous experience.

It sounds a lot like what we do with our patients every single day. We already have the skill, can we apply it to our nursing colleagues who may need support? Sure, some institutions have formal mentorship programs but 60% of mentorships develop organically.

Mentorship is an actionable solution that stops the generational trauma of nursing. It is a way of caring about what the future looks like. We have to be the answer to the awful, yet accepted culture that nurses eat their young.

It ends with us.

We will create a new culture, a culture that we can feel proud to be a part of, a culture that restores us, a culture that the next generation of nurses will want to be a part of.

Our nurses need us as mentors, and their future patients need them to be mentored. This is true both for new nurses and veteran nurses. It can be peer mentoring, brainstorming ways to deal with the stressors and figure out solutions to the issues that come up.

Stepping up to this role doesn’t just create benefits for the future, the benefits for the mentor can be almost immediate. The research shows that being a mentor increases job satisfaction and fulfillment. Being engaged and leaning in, developing a strong sense of team are some of the key prevention measures against burnout.

How can you help someone avoid some of the hardships that you went through, how can you spare them some suffering?

Contemplate what effect this would have on you and on the other nurse.

• What is the impact that 1 nurse has on patients throughout their career?

• What impact will it have for you to help that one nurse succeed in feeling better, more confident, more dedicated, and more supported? How will it affect their patients?

Don’t hold all your experience to yourself, pay it forward.

The nurses need your mentorship. The patients need their nurses to be mentored.

The best part is, by doing this, you will feel better too, more restored, more engaged, less tired.

I’m not making it up. Give it a try. It’s the next step in nursing.

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If you have someone that has impacted you in this way, share this post with them/tag them in the comments. Build up and support the people who have helped you get this far. Let them know that the work they are doing has meaning and impact.