Transforming Bedside Nursing Care through Practice-Academic Co-Mentoring Relationships

Abstract

This article reports how nursing staff, nurse managers, faculty, and graduate students from a regional children's hospital and a research-intensive public university came together to solve a clinical challenge. The challenge was addressed when these practice and academic professionals collaborated and used nursing theory to educate staff nurses and plan a research project. The most significant results from this partnership have been the deep, reciprocal co-mentoring relationships that have formed among participants and the impressive results they have produced. Not finding a fitting description in the literature for the co-mentoring relationships formed through this partnership, the co-mentees formulated their own definition: a trusting, collaborative, and reciprocal teaching/learning relationship among interprofessional colleagues working together with shared power to produce quantifiable results that mutually benefit those involved. Outcomes from this ongoing endeavor include: transforming healthcare through the realistic use of nursing theory, research, and education at the bedside; enhancing nursing education, theory, and research in academia; increased nursing scholarship and professional growth; advancing institutional goals; and strengthening the discipline of nursing.