Transitioning back to faculty roles after being a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Nurse Faculty Scholar: Challenges and opportunities.

BACKGROUND: There is a dearth of literature describing factors supporting a successful transition from a career-development fellowship to resumption of the full complement of faculty roles. PURPOSE: Because little is known about the transition back to the full faculty role, a subset of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Nurse Faculty Scholars (NFS) was interviewed to evaluate the self-identified challenges and opportunities that the scholars faced and factors contributing to their success when they reassumed the full faculty role. METHODS: A subset of scholars from cohorts beginning the RWJF NFS program between 2008 and 2012 (n = 10) was interviewed by members of the NFS National Advisory Committee. NFSs identified challenges and opportunities faced as they transitioned to their faculty roles following completion of the career development fellowship as well as the character of support received from individuals in their organizational influencing the experience of the faculty transition. Evaluation outcomes include recommendations for transition planning for home institutions, colleagues and fellows. RESULTS: NFSs identified transition challenges including managing multiple responsibilities and increased teaching demands coupled with loss of protected time and funding for scholarly work. Opportunities for career advancement were influenced by effective mentorship, institutional supports including advocacy and allocation of time and responsibilities consistent with continued research productivity. Issues contributing to a more difficult transition included non-supportive relationships among administrators and colleagues and newly assigned responsibilities that detracted from success in meeting expectations for tenure and promotion. Effective transition from fellow to faculty included plans for continued mentorship and stakeholder engagement of administration, mentors and faculty colleagues. CONCLUSIONS: Effective transition from fellow to the full complement of the faculty role benefits both the home institution and scholar. Positive outcomes may be contingent on scholar support and organizational investment during the transition period.

Does Having Been Mentored Affect Subsequent Mentoring?

BACKGROUND: How to be an effective mentor is typically not taught formally because good mentoring is thought to beget good mentoring, but there is little concrete data to support that connection. PURPOSE: Scholars in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Nurse Faculty Scholars (NFS) program were surveyed to find out if the mentoring they received influenced their subsequent mentoring. METHOD: The qualities that form the Mentorship Effectiveness Scale were used to investigate if the experience changed scholars' views of mentoring; open-ended questions provided an opportunity for scholars to describe additional insights. RESULTS: Thirty-nine out of 93 scholars (42%) replied. Scholars were influenced by the mentoring they received: they were now more inclined to give guidance on professional issues, provide constructive critiques, suggest resources, acknowledge mentees' contributions, and challenge mentees to extend their abilities. Scholars' experiences made them more aware of the power of mentoring, provided them with insights into how they might do the same, convinced them that mentoring shouldn't be confined to one advisor, made them realize that one style of mentoring doesn't work for everyone, and improved their likelihood of using an individual development plan when they mentored. CONCLUSIONS: Effective mentoring does seem to beget effective mentoring because the interaction with mentors seems to leave a lasting impression and the perceived obligation to "pay it forward."

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Nurse Faculty Scholars program leadership training.

BACKGROUND: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Nurse Faculty Scholars program was created to address the nursing shortage via development of the next generation of national leaders in academic nursing. PURPOSE: The leadership training combined development at the scholar's home institution with in-person didactic and interactive sessions with notable leaders in nursing and other disciplines. METHODS: A curriculum matrix, organized by six domains, was evaluated quantitatively and qualitatively. DISCUSSION: What set this program apart is that it immersed junior faculty in concerted leadership development with regard to all aspects of the faculty role so that teaching interactively, making use of the latest in information technology, giving testimony before a policy-making group, participating in strategic planning, and figuring out how to reduce the budget without jeopardizing quality were all envisioned as part of the faculty role. CONCLUSION: The domains covered by this program could easily be used as the framework to plan other leadership-development programs for the next generation of academic leaders.

The impact of the Nurse Faculty Scholars program on schools of nursing.

BACKGROUND: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Nurse Faculty Scholars program was conceptualized as not only promoting the growth and development of early-career faculty but as enhancing the research infrastructure of scholars' schools of nursing. PURPOSE: At the completion of the scholars' three years of support, deans/directors were asked to provide feedback regarding the institutional impact of the scholars' participation in the program. METHODS: Phone interviews were conducted on the first five completed cohorts and a six-item questionnaire was developed to obtain some quantitative data. DISCUSSION: The program was viewed as having accelerated the scholars' leadership and scholarship, and their influence within the school/university and regionally/nationally. Deans/directors generally agreed that the scholars' experience helped build the school's research portfolio. CONCLUSION: Looking back on how the participating schools of nursing fared, one can say that the program's institutional expectations were achieved most of the time. The program helped scholars build their own reputations and that in turn had consequences for the school's standing as a whole. A number of components are described that can be replicated singly or in various combinations by schools/universities interested in adopting aspects of this program.

Building a mentoring network.

BACKGROUND: Mentoring has long been regarded as one of the key components of research training and faculty development. PURPOSE: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Nurse Faculty Scholars program purposely facilitated scholars' development of a mentoring network by providing each individual with three mentors: a school-of-nursing mentor (primary), a university-based non-nurse research mentor (research), and a nationally-recognized nurse leader at another university (national). METHOD: The Mentorship Effectiveness Scale was used to assess the effectiveness of each type of mentor in the first five completed cohorts. DISCUSSION: The ratings of mentorship effectiveness for all three kinds of mentors were generally high. Scholars valued most their mentors' support and advocacy; the biggest weakness in dealing with all mentors was accessibility. CONCLUSION: Even when one mentor proved a poor match, another mentor turned out to be an advocate and helpful, thus reaffirming the benefits of a mentoring network as opposed to only a single mentoring relationship. One lesson learned is the importance of preparing mentors for their role via written materials, in-person or phone orientations, and discussions at the annual meeting.

Overview of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Nurse Faculty Scholars program.

BACKGROUND: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Nurse Faculty Scholars program was created to address the nursing faculty shortage and thereby decrease the nursing shortage. PURPOSE: The purpose of the study was to describe the program development, implementation, and ongoing outcome evaluation. METHODS: Data on scholarly productivity, impact of research, research funding, and leadership positions were compiled, including an h-index (impact of publications) comparison with a comparison group of other interdisciplinary faculty at the same institutions of the 90 current and alumni scholars. DISCUSSION: There is evidence of the achievements of the individual scholars; however, the effect of the synergy of the multiple components of the program is difficult to capture in traditional evaluation strategies. CONCLUSIONS: The sense of possibility and responsibility (to the profession, to improving the health of all Americans, and to one's school of nursing and university) was a significant outcome of the program. Lessons learned from the program are important for the leadership development and retention of nursing faculty.

Serving on a hospital board: A case study.

BACKGROUND: It is important for nurses to serve on hospital boards, largely to give voice to matters of quality and patient safety. PURPOSE: Describe what one nurse was able to accomplish on a statewide board over time as chair of the board's Quality and Patient Safety Committee. METHODS: The experience was analyzed using auto-ethnography and narrative analysis. DISCUSSION: After describing the organization, the paper summarizes the key issues on which the nurse took the lead, measures of success in the role, and learning acquired along the way. CONCLUSION: The "system" orientation of nurses is an asset in getting hospital boards to view themselves as institutional champions of quality.

Leading-Following Perspectives.

When I think of my own leadership journey, I credit philosopher Simone De Beauvoir with having shaped my thinking in fundamental ways. Not only did her groundbreaking book The Second Sex (1952) provide the theoretical underpinnings for my book The Growth and Development of Mothers (1973), the first well-regarded analysis of motherhood in light of the women's movement, but her critique of masculine-feminine universals has proven useful in a continuing way to my development as a leader. She was the first person I read to question the notion that the man is destined to be the head of the family and the woman the heart. Her reflections on how this kind of dualistic thinking gets in the way of fully realizing one's potential got me to thinking early in my career about nurse leadership (McBride, 1972).

Clustering excellence to exert transformative change: the Hartford Geriatric Nursing Initiative (HGNI).

This paper describes how the John A. Hartford Foundation sought to maximize the influence of its various geriatric nursing projects by organizing and managing them collectively as the Hartford Geriatric Nursing Initiative (HGNI). This initiative aimed to develop a shared identity, encouraged cross-pollination of efforts, convened project leaders to address opportunities and problems, launched across-project collaborations, and created tools and resources to support overall efforts. This paper ends with some reflections on the processes implemented to maximize HGNI effectiveness, particularly the importance of forging a common identity in order to encourage expanded solutions. The HGNI can serve as an example of how intersecting interests can fuel new ideas, thus helping others think more strategically about change efforts in the future.

Toward a roadmap for interdisciplinary academic career success.

The 21st century is a period of increased focus on interdisciplinary collaboration. To facilitate movement in the direction of interdisciplinary research, this article discusses some generic stumbling blocks, unique problems, and advantages that nurses experience, plus the rewards and hallmarks of well-functioning interdisciplinary research teams. The article ends with an overview of how interdisciplinary development can and should be part of each stage of academic career success.

Expanding the capacity of nursing education.

Assuring a nurse workforce that is large enough and possesses the right competencies for the changing demographic and health reform scenarios of the early twenty-first century is nothing short of an imperative. Getting there will involve continual recruitment of a talented and diverse group of people and increasing nurses' progression to a more highly educated workforce, no matter where they enter the profession. These actions will enable the United States to fill vacant nursing faculty positions as we simultaneously re-create how nursing education is delivered in this country. The nation's health is dependent on the actions we now take.

Nursing and the informatics revolution.

The Institute of Medicine's quality initiatives have collectively emphasized the importance of information technology to the transformation of health care. Not coincidentally, federal initiatives in 2004 have signaled the start of "the decade of health information technology." Building on those reports, this article describes the informatics revolution in process, and nursing's readiness to move in that direction. The promise of informatics in reshaping practice is sketched out in terms of seven aims for improvement, followed by a listing of some of the issues that must be addressed for nursing to realize those possibilities. In similar fashion, changes in academia are discussed both in terms of the promise of informatics applications and the barriers to achieving that preferred future. The article ends with some policy recommendations and reflections on opportunities at hand, particularly the growing emphasis on patient self-management support.

Evolving as a university-wide school of nursing.

To facilitate standardization of curricula and to expand program offerings around the state, Indiana University School of Nursing has been charged by university officials with becoming a multicampus school of nursing. In that evolution, the focus was on identifying the core commonalities that hold across campuses in areas of fundamental interest to the accreditation process: material resources; quality of faculty; criteria for student admission, progression, and graduation; shared policies; standardization of curricula; and evaluation of outcomes. After three decades of experimentation, with the advent of responsibility-centered management, the trend shifted from a centralized to a more decentralized approach, yet the resulting model for a university-wide school of nursing retains clear advantages, for example, a substantial presence in the aggregate that makes nursing visible within the state. This history of multisite collaboration has relevance for other schools of nursing as pressure to form institutional partnerships grows in importance prompted by mounting financial constraints and faculty shortages.