From the moment I started nursing school, I became part of a long line of mentorship.  Each instructor strove not to only impart nursing skills and clinical judgment, ethics and leadership, critical thinking and competent confidence, but to share stories.  Stories of mistakes, stories of successes, stories of tricks of the trade that aren’t found in any book.  Each preceptor did the same, a working partner to serve as mentor and act as a rich reservoir of learning.  Each preceptor has added to the formation of my own nursing practice.  Without fail, each mentor has been immensely generous with her time and knowledge and support and feedback.

Nursing is as much an art as it is a science. A new nurse can have a gut feeling about something.  An experienced nurse knows when to trust that gut feeling.  As a new nurse, I rely on the experienced nurse to test my own gut.  And each time, I add weight to trusting my own clinical judgment.

Now that I’m actively working as a nurse, the mentorship I’m experiencing has a different tone.  We’re colleagues, and my focus and goals are the same as hers.  There’s an urgency to it, mostly because she’s going on maternity leave.  I’m transitioning to a new mentor, but she’ll be more of a sounding board at this point, her and the NP there to back me up when I need it as I start to see patients on my own.  I have no idea if she realizes just how meaningful its been for me, and I’m not sure I can adequately communicate it, or if I even should.  It’s part of the tradition of nursing.  Pass on the torch, share the light, make it a little brighter, knowing what you shared will in turn be shared with another nurse.

Now, at two weeks in, I have had the odd and unfamiliar experience of acting as teacher to another RN at a facility, modeling my own learning, communicating my own advice in response to her seeking it.

It’s disconcerting as hell.  And exhilarating.  This is me, passing it on.  I hear the words of these mentors of mine come from my own lips, the education and training too, yes, but the ART of nursing, that way of communicating that comes from that gut-level trust, somehow it’s me wielding the brush instead of being the canvas.

It’s scary.  And kinda awesome.