How New NPs Can Find Mentors

In this blog, Psych Congress Steering Committee Member, Andrew Penn, RN, MS, NP, CNS, APRN-BC, explains mentoring, how to find one as a nurse practitioner (NP), and what to do when you have found a possible mentor. He gives practical advice, suggested questions to ask a prospective mentor, and avenues to find the right fit.

What is mentoring, and how do you find a mentor?

Mentoring is a critical “soft skill” that helps to transmit wisdom and knowledge from older, more experienced generations of clinicians to those who are earlier in their professional journey.  But it is more than just a 1-way transmission. The mentee brings energy and a fresh perspective to the relationship, and out of that connection, new ideas can emerge. But how does one find a mentor?

A nurse practitioner (NP) colleague recently shared that she is getting inundated with requests from new clinicians that she doesn’t personally know, asking for “mentoring.” The details of these mentoring requests vary from clinical supervision to suggestions for improvement of a PowerPoint deck. My colleague, a very skilled clinician and astute educator, is already a mentor to many within her clinic and to her students, and she finds herself gently declining these requests. Why?

I don’t know if the 2 years of pandemic-induced distance learning have decreased the opportunities for students to spend time with faculty and clinical preceptors. Another possibility is that the education-as-purchasable-product mentality that seems to have crept into higher education (ie, “I paid a lot of money for a course and after that program is over, I get a credential that I can use to get a job and make money”), has eroded the transmission of some of the more subtle skills that are transmitted in higher education. Faculty may, at times, seem like “faucets of knowledge” from whom students drink, but seeing education as simply a transactional consumable, reduces the opportunity to engage in challenging and questioning our ideas, and from out of those conversations can emerge the exciting synthesis when 2 or more minds coming together to create something new.

NP training, because of its fairly short duration and focus on the pragmatic aspects of learning and practicing patient care, does not always build in formal mentoring in ways that can be seen in the training of other professions. In other words: NP’s, it’s up to you to find a mentor.

These new clinicians looking for guidance have one thing right—you go to the mentor. The mentor does not come to you. However, the people you will likely want to be your mentors are probably busy, successful people. That’s why you want them to mentor you, right?

Mentors are usually someone you know or are introduced to

One of the advantages to going to a well-regarded, in-person training program is the network of fellow clinicians and colleagues you will build as a result of your transit through your education. Your faculty and preceptors are obvious candidates to be mentors. For those who are in an online/distance learning program, this will likely require you to be more proactive, as your program will not come with the after-class hallway chats and opportunities to grab lunch or coffee with your faculty. Pay attention to the other work that your teachers are engaged in or do a quick search of their research to see what they’ve studied. If you find a faculty member who has interests aligned with your own, send them an email. If you hear a professor or preceptor talking about their colleagues who are doing work that you’re interested in, ask for an introduction. But not yet. Keep reading.

Not all advisors are mentors

Vineet Chopra, Vineet Aurora, and Sanjay Saint wrote (2017) in JAMA, that there are 4 archetypes of mentors: the traditionalist, the coach, the sponsor, and the connector. These roles may overlap, of course, but it’s worth appreciating how they are similar and different. Regardless, choose wisely. A teacher of mine once said, “you get good at whatever you practice, so choose wisely what you practice.” A mentor will rub off on you, and your reputation may become an extension of theirs, so choose someone with integrity whom you personally admire.

The Traditional Mentor: In a traditional mentoring relationship, both the mentor and the mentee benefit from the relationship, but usually the mentor is more senior, and therefore gets to choose who they will mentor. This relationship is collaborative and reciprocal and based on the shared trust, similar interests, and values that emerge from regular, boundaried conversations. In school, look for faculty who have similar interests as yours and initiate a conversation where you can see if there’s a mutual interest in mentoring. Many professionals love to talk about their work. In NP work, a senior clinician in your hospital may serve in this role as a case consultant, but the same advice about preparation holds true: if you ask for a case consultation, you should be very familiar with your case and prepared to answer questions. Additionally, be prepared to have what you’re doing challenged. If you’re just looking for affirmation, don’t bother with mentoring. Be humble and open-minded if you’re challenged in this way. You may be surprised by what you learn. In the traditional mentor relationship, the mentee should be working harder than the mentor.

The Coach: Nurse coaching has become something of a cottage industry, driven by mid-career nurses to diversifying from delivering only patient care and the need of newer nurses to seek guidance in their nascent practices. In coaching, the relationship is often focused, time-limited, transactional (many coaches charge by the hour), and goal directed. Coaches often provide specific advice, work with their clients to identify barriers to success, and to set specific, measurable outcome goals. Most coaches do not serve as traditional or longitudinal mentors.

The Sponsor: Sponsors are senior, respected people in their field who use their stature and networks to elevate mentees. This is one situation where a mentee may not be aware that they have a “fairy godmother” who is helping to advance their career, until the sponsor reaches out to the mentee with an ask: be an author on a paper, spearhead a clinical project, speak at a conference. If that request is coming from someone with a longer career and greater stature than you, you may be wise, if you have the bandwidth, to jump on the opportunity. Sponsors know that they are risking their own reputation by promoting a junior colleague or trainee, so if you’ve been tapped, you know they already believe in you. Show up fully and do an excellent job.

The Connector: Connectors are mentors who are well-known in their fields and use this social capital to pair people who may not know each other to advance their work or to even collaborate. If a mentor ever asks you, “do you know so-and-so? She’s doing work in this area,” you’re being invited to connect, and you should accept that invitation enthusiastically. Ask for an email of introduction, and then quickly begin a conversation with the person you’ve just been introduced to, while thanking the connector (and moving them to BCC to spare their inbox!) who brought you together.

You might notice that “The Friend” is not an archetype. This is an intentional omission. While you will most certainly be friendly with your mentor, and the relationship may have aspects of a friendship, it is a little bit different, similar to how clinical supervision may have some similarities to therapy but is not the same as psychotherapy. Mentoring relationships are often warm, significant, and often very important relationships in our professional lives, but it is this subtle difference from conventional friendship that permits for objectivity and allows for a mentor to offer corrective advice, even if it’s difficult for the mentee to hear.

Additionally, these categories of mentor are not absolute. You may meet a potential mentor at a conference or through a professional organization like the American Psychiatric Nurses Association. You may have a professor who is researching subjects that are of interest to you. A conversation after class may lead to an invitation to collaborate on a project or career advice and later, that person may serve as a sponsor or write a letter of recommendation for you. Personally, I very much enjoy the connections that I maintain with my students after they graduate and have gone on to invite them to give talks, collaborate on papers, and have written letters of recommendation for them.

Once you’ve found a possible mentor, what do you do?

Before you meet, identify your goals, then share them:  It is not the job of your mentor to generate your goals, but they may help you define and operationalize them. Think about what kind of mentoring you’re needing (connection, coaching, sponsorship, or traditional), and how to operationalize that need into clear questions. You may be declined by a potential mentor, and while this is disappointing, it’s also a sign of healthy boundaries and a self-awareness on the part of the mentor that they do not have adequate bandwidth to help mentor you. You might consider asking the person who else in your field they would suggest you speak with.

A new NP might ask a mentor, “I notice I feel awkward when I try to talk to patients about harm reduction. I’d like to get more comfortable using these strategies with my patients. Where might be a good place to start doing this, and where could I learn more about harm reduction?”

Show up early, enthusiastic, and prepared: Remember, unless your mentor is a paid coach, they are doing this on their own time (and as a result of their success, their time is often in great demand). Come to the mentoring conversation prepared with thoughtful questions which you will take away and work on. Do not expect the mentor to do your work for you. As Chopra and Saint said in the Harvard Business Review (2017), “under promise and overdeliver.” You both will be contributing energy to the relationship, but the mentee should contribute more, and certainly never deplete the energy of the mentor. A successful mentorship conversation is one in which both parties leave feeling enthusiastic and excited about the future. Out of these conversations may come opportunities to collaborate on projects, papers, or presentations.

For a new psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner, a prepared question might be, “When would I choose an antidepressant over a mood stabilizer in a bipolar patient with depression who has never had full mania? I’ve reviewed the literature, and I can see arguments in both directions. How do you decide?”

Acknowledge and appreciate your mentor and work toward becoming one yourself:  Mentors are usually busy and successful people who give their time to mentees out of a passion for the work and the future of the profession. It’s traditional in academia to acknowledge your mentor during talks, or to make a mentor who advised you on a paper the last (senior) author on that paper. A quick email or thank you card goes a long way toward maintaining the relationship, and often leads to important follow-up conversations. Additionally, mentioning the things that you’ve learned from your mentors to newer clinicians helps to make the idea of mentoring a familiar expectation within a profession. And, it goes without saying, if you have the chance to mentor someone later in your career, do it! It invariably comes earlier in your career than you expect, and you’ll probably think “I’m not ready to mentor,” but give it a go. You’ll probably be pleasantly surprised by how much you both gain from the experience.

Andrew Penn, RN, MS, NP, CNS, APRN-BC, was trained as an adult nurse practitioner and psychiatric clinical nurse specialist at the University of California, San Francisco. He is board certified as an adult nurse practitioner and psychiatric nurse practitioner by the American Nurses Credentialing Center. He has completed extensive training in Psychedelic Assisted Psychotherapy at the California Institute for Integral Studies and recently published a book chapter on this modality in The Casebook of Positive Psychiatry, published by American Psychiatric Association Press. Currently, he serves as an associate clinical professor at the University of California-San Francisco School of Nursing. He is also an attending nurse practitioner at the San Francisco Veterans Administration. He has expertise in psychopharmacological treatment for adult patients and specializes in the treatment of affective disorders and PTSD. Penn is also a Steering Committee member for Psych Congress.