As the nursing profession continues to grow and develop, mentoring of our new nurses is essential to developing the nurse leaders of the future. Hear what Mary Terhaar, DNSc, CNS, RN, Director of the Doctor of Nursing Practice Program and Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing in Baltimore, Maryland, and Angela Barron McBride, Ph.D., RN, FAAN, and Chair of the National Advisory Committee of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Nurse Faculty Scholars program have to say about nurse mentoring.

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Jamie Davis:         Angela and Mary, welcome to Nursing Notes Live and I guess I’ll start with you, Angela. Would you like to share with us a little bit about your background in nursing, why you became a nurse and what led you to where you are today?

Angela McBride: I am someone who became a nurse in part because all through high school, I worked as a nurse’s aide. I had a great-uncle who was good friends – he was a priest – he was good friends with a nun who was the head of a hospital and he actually was instrumental in getting me to do nurse’s aide work. But this was at a time in the ‘50s when you wound up doing really quite a large range of things even though you were not educated. And I was just intrigued with the range of what kind of things you could be doing as a nurse. I wound up eventually specializing in psychiatric mental health nursing. I wound up after that then getting into university teaching. So, for me, it’s been a route from liking to work with people and their families, liking the idea that every day is different, there’s so many things that you can do, and then being increasingly interested in preparing nurses for tomorrow. I’m old enough that my whole career has been spent with a lot of what was the development of nursing, the development of advanced practice programs, the development of doctoral programs, the development of post-doc research training. I continue to really be loving nursing for the range of what you can wind up doing so the – I think when I was growing up, it was the notion of a nurse is a nurse is a nurse. So one thing I know is whatever your talent, there’s a spot for you in nursing.

Jamie:                   I love the way you say that, whatever your talent is, there’s a spot for you. I’d certainly never thought I’d become a nurse journalist when I got started and yet I really love what I do now. So that’s very interesting you say that. Mary, what about you? What was your background in nursing? Why did you decide to become a nurse?

Mary Terhaar:     Well, it was fun to listen to Angela describe hers. My grandmother was a nurse at the end of the war and at that time the training wasn’t the same but I always admired her work and so that got me started. Much like Angela, I worked as a candy striper in a hospital. So I guess I think I’ve always been a nurse as far back as I can remember. So that gave me this appetite for nursing all across the house. So I was the person who always volunteer to go wherever there was help needed and that always gave me the chance to see nurses working in different settings, solving different kinds of problems and meeting different kinds of needs. I’ve always been attracted to that. So when I was in nursing school, and I’m a three-year grad, when I was in nursing school I worked in labor and delivery and NICU and I loved it and I still went wherever was needed. But my heart really was in the NICU. So all throughout my career, I’ve been in NICU and labor and delivery. I’ve been somebody who could solve problems when I finished my doctorate,