Excursus sobre la Trinidad DC

My interest in this research began with my own experience and journey from being a novice SDN, and increased through subsequent positions in hospital-based nursing education. In this section of the thesis, I describe my story, as this has influenced my views about beginning SDNs.

As a registered nurse, I had experience working in intensive care units (ICU) within tertiary hospitals. After working in this field for several years, I completed a postgraduate qualification in critical care. With my new-found knowledge, I became an enthusiastic mentor and preceptor for novice intensive care nurses. Clinical teaching was an enjoyable challenge for me. I was comfortable sharing my knowledge, and with

other senior clinical nurses, organised regular in-services for ICU staff.Eventually, a colleague suggested that I should think about applying for an acting SDN role in the adjacent coronary care unit and acute medical unit, and I thought ‘Why not?’ Much to my surprise, I found I had no idea what the job entailed or what was expected of me; quite the opposite of my experience as clinical nurse in the ICU. The transition to ward- based SDN was disconcerting and I was totally unprepared for the role, which resulted in a sense of isolation. I recall feeling bemusement that I was in a state of not being sure what to do next, and that somehow, I should know what to do as an SDN. It was with some irony that I observed that the SDN was responsible for the orientation of new clinical staff, yet I did not receive an orientation or instruction to the SDN role or coaching from the staff development department. Consequently, I muddled my way through the secondment period and returned to the ICU.

A couple of years later, my continuing interest in staff development led me to be appointed as a SDN at another hospital for their hospital-based postgraduate program. My experience of the transition to this SDN role was in stark contrast to my previous venture. In the postgraduate nursing education unit, I received orientation, instruction and mentoring from an experienced and skilful educator and was immediately

introduced to and integrated into a group of supportive colleagues who were generous with sharing tips, materials and answers to questions. I was responsible for clinical teaching by the bedside as well as delivering lectures to postgraduate students. I really enjoyed this role and derived much satisfaction from interactions with learners and learning from my education colleagues. I had an interested and engaged nurse educator mentor who assisted me to develop my skills in nurse education and curriculum

routine in line with the responsibilities of following up with students and delivering lectures on a program with a curriculum over 12 months. My mentor actively supported my career trajectory by encouraging me to pursue secondments to senior education roles. This led to a promotional appointment to a SDE position in the hospital-wide education service (external to the postgraduate nursing education unit), where I was responsible for provision of professional development opportunities for hospital-based nurses. The work involved developing and delivering education sessions focused on clinical

and professional content in a decentralised education service. As a new SDE, I

experienced a lack of orientation and role support, and it took personal resilience and my own ‘can do’ attitude to find my feet. I held this position for several years and while I experienced satisfactory outcomes in projects, programs and working relationships, I experienced the following:

• It took time and energy to influence everybody for anything.

• The hospital SDNs were a disparate group, separated by operational services that did not always encourage working across organisational boundaries and held tightly the ‘ownership’ of the SDN role.

• Role support for new and substantive SDNs and nurse educators was ad hoc and dependent on being driven by interested individuals who in turn needed to do so from a position of influence rather than line management.

• There was a lack of cohesion across the organisation in planning and sometimes a resistance to working together to manage differing ideas, resulting in

duplication of effort with people working in silos.

• There was no organisational-wide agreed governance or processes to manage training and development, so recordkeeping and use of resources was not well organised or cohesive.

My observations and experience prompted a long-term interest in staff development and how people learn and stimulated my ambition to achieve a nurse education leadership role. To turn those thoughts into reality, I pursued higher education degrees in training and development, leadership and management and non-tertiary studies in transactional analysis and neurolinguistic programming. During this period, I completed a Master of Nursing, with a research project Exploring the structural and

social environment of the nursing preceptor in an acute care hospital environment.

Without a doubt, these studies influenced my thinking on education in the workplace. Eventually, I was offered an opportunity as acting Nurse Director Staff

Development at yet another hospital. This was my first role as the senior lead in nurse education, sitting at the nursing executive table. At this hospital, the education service was a decentralised model, and I felt that I was still operating within my comfort zone: continuing to function in an influential rather than a directive way to deploy education initiatives and programs. I had similar observations from my previous experience regarding the SDNs; however, I was on a fixed term secondment and an inexperienced Nurse Director, so it wasn’t the time to challenge the status quo!

Some months later, I was appointed to the position of DSD at a large tertiary hospital with a centralised SDS. I had responsibility for strategic and operational matters relevant to the functioning and provision of nursing and midwifery education for nurses and

midwives within my organisation. At first, it was quite daunting—all eyes looked to me

for leadership and direction of the education service. My days of getting things done by influence alone were in the past and I had to step up quickly. What struck me was the lack of role orientation and education mentors at that level. However, I was fortunate to have a supportive Director of Nursing, who as a knowledgeable other, provided

confide in when I lacked self-confidence. At this point, I was truly appreciative of my years of postgraduate study and began to draw on my body of knowledge to develop the SDS and people in it. My experience as a nurse educator helped to shape this study. For example, because I had received encouragement and guidance from peers and mentors, as I interviewed the study participants, I listened for examples of support they might have received and the types of relationships that they had established. My own

experience in nursing education, preceptor research and similar experiences I had heard from other nurse educators prompted me to ask the study participants about their transitions from clinical nurse to the role of SDN. Thus, in reference to the literature review, my personal perspective and beliefs comprise the frames of interpretation that I brought to the study.

The literature review highlighted for me that although there is a considerable volume of research on transition experience of nurses to higher education in general, there is a distinct lack of research on the experiences of nurses making the transition to a HBNE role. Therefore, I perceived a gap in the body of nursing research about novice HBNEs and determined that a study such as this would allow a better understanding of their experiences. This information will be of value to those concerned with hiring and supporting HBNEs.