Health Care : Current Reviews

Mentoring Competency of Nurse Managers and Career Advancement of Staff Nurses: A Model for Professional Development

Anna Liza Rivero Alfonso ¹Far Eastern University, Philippines

Received: 15-Jan-2021 Published: 26-Feb-2021, DOI: 10.35248/2375-4273.21.9.274

Introduction

Nursing has always been a noble profession and mentoring is essential in the career development of both novice and experienced nurses in the areas of clinical practice, nursing education, leadership and management, and research. Nursing profession is one that stretches nurses to the maximum while at work, but considered one of the most exhilarating jobs known today since nurses are recognized vital for all health care system in the world. However, career satisfaction in nursing may be a critical element in retaining nurses in the profession in which mentoring may be a strategy towards professional growth.

The purpose of the study is to assess head nurse mentoring competency in relation to staff nurses’ career advancement in selected government and private hospitals towards nursing professional development model. Moreover, the study aims to broaden the array of perspective among public and private hospitals for nurses to move towards identifying, designing and implement a career advancement structure within clinical practice that allows nurses prepared to a higher level of education and training in clinical practice, contribute and articulate nursing’s role to high-quality health care among multi-disciplinary care teams.

The researcher’s interest is related to exploring whether people who are currently involved in these roles agree or disagree with the views and opinions of those in the literature. Also, to discover if the participants mention or report that they believe that head nurse mentoring competency could have positive effects on career advancement of staff nurses. Since the researcher is a nurse manager herself, this study aims to describe that mentoring is a symbiotic relationship towards career advancement and satisfaction for both nurse managers’ and staff nurses’ personal and professional development.

The study utilized descriptive-correlational method of research to 199 respondents that were conveniently selected. Data were obtained using adopted research questionnaires. While there is a shift in the workforce currently happening in different generations of people in the nursing profession, this research studied the profile characteristics of staff nurse respondents in order to have comprehensive understanding of mentoring relationship that can be tied into career advancement.

Findings of the study showed that nurse manager-mentors in both public and private hospitals are very good on mentoring in identifying areas for improvement, responsive coaching, advocating for an environment conducive to good patient care, and documentation/record keeping, but, good about relationship building. Similarly, career advancement of staff nurse respondents in both public and private hospital is considerably very good particularly on certification program; post graduate education; and job rotation. Productivity, however, is relatively good.

Statistical analysis indicated significant difference on the assessment of staff nurse respondents of their nurse managers’ competency in mentoring about documentation/record keeping in terms of age and length of work experience; significant difference on relationship building in terms of education; but no significant difference in any of the variables of nurse managers’ mentoring competency in terms of sex and hospital type. In general, mentoring competency of nurse managers between public and private hospitals illustrated no significant difference. Similarly, career advancement of staff nurse respondents between public and private hospitals showed no significant difference.

With regard to significant relationship between nurse managers’ mentoring competency and staff nurse respondents’ career advancement, there is moderate positive correlation which indicates nurses working in either public or private hospital have very good mentoring program in the workplace that could lead to higher organizational commitment, greater job satisfaction and increased retention.

Mentoring for career advancement is a sound and stable way to increase job satisfaction. It can groom novice nurses to be shoo-ins for upcoming executive positions, or just help someone master a skill useful for their career path. Mentors certainly play a vital role in providing opportunities for career development and strategies need to outline measures for sustaining operational efficiency in a way that drives professional development.

Given the changing dynamics of the health care system, the current structure for nursing career advancement needs careful reevaluation and reconceptualization. Presently, most career advancement structure emphasizes and rewards staff nurse’s abilities and competencies in their clinical practice areas.

The structure does not incentivize nurses to be leaders at the end of care, nor does encourage clinical nurses to pursue, engage and/or acquire a formal advanced degree, while remaining in clinical or frontline of nursing practice.

The success of an organization is based on the professionalism and motivation of the personnel. Competent personnel are an important capital of the organization and personnel’s development is essential investment in the strategy of the organization (Green and Jackson, 2014). In order to maintain their professionalism and motivation, the personnel should enjoy their work and feel important for the organization. Hence, personnel’s well-being at work should receive attention. Wellbeing at work can be improved in many different ways; for example, by giving feedback, giving rewards, arranging the working-time more flexibly for an individual employee or recreational days for the staff, providing meaningful training for the staff or arranging performance appraisals. The key factor to a successful organization is personnel with high state of wellbeing. When a person feels good he can work efficiently, learn, develop and produce creative solutions and innovations. Thus, person’s own resources become power for the whole organization...