Mentoring and Models
by Mary Klingbeil Shultz |
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 I became a Christian Science nursing mentor because of the woman who mentored me in my Christian Science nurses' training. She was the model I looked up to. I wanted to be able to nurse the way she did. Her influence on my life was profound because her standards were high and her care so compassionate.
In my training days Christian Science nursing students and staff could not fraternize, yet her love and support were always felt. With her I had the freedom to grow, even the freedom to grow by making mistakes. When I became a floor supervisor she told me, "You will make mistakes, but I will support you in every one of them." I knew she meant to remove my fear of responsibility and she was true to her word. She never criticized me on the floor in front of others but would ask that I come to her office for a chat. There, I would sweat bullets. She always opened the conversation with the same words, "Now, Miss Klingbeil, I will tell you what you should have done."
Through her explanations of better ways to handle situations, I learned to supervise. I always knew her corrections were based on love. While sometimes I wished I could vanish into a hole in the floor, her corrections never felt like punishment. I was never embarrassed by them. They were guidance. There was never any anger or disappointment in her corrections, just a simple, "Here is what you did and here is how you can do it better."
I learned from her that mentors must be good model Christian Science nurses. Their vision of Christian Science enables them to live what they teach. They must have good nursing skills and express the qualities Mrs. Eddy expected of her nurses (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures 395:18).
Mentors are individual manifestations of Love in action. They lead by example. They must be comfortable with students watching, analyzing and critiquing everything they do. They must also be comfortable in those uncomfortable moments when they have done something they wish they hadn't and "everyone" is watching. But students learn from mentors' mistakes too.
Mentoring also requires, while setting the right example, pointing out what a student is doing wrong. Mentors must be comfortable giving correction, knowing that it may make the student unhappy or possibly the student may rebel against the correction or even the mentor.
The ability of a student to take correction with grace and humility is essential to mastering a skill or more fully expressing a Christian Science nursing quality. Even Mrs. Eddy was grateful for merited rebuke, for she wrote in Science and Health, "During many years the author has been most grateful for merited rebuke. The wrong lies in unmerited censure,--in the falsehood which does no one any good." (Science and Health 9:2)
Mentors see in students developing nursing qualities and skills long before the trainee has mastered them. Yet, mentors do not mold students into Christian Science nurses. They provide the opportunities which bring out the nursing qualities and skills which already exist within the student. They also test and develop practical wisdom or good nursing judgment. Through study, practice and keen observation of the nursing practice of the experienced Christian Science nurses around them, students internalize their own model of a Christian Science nurse. Once skills have been mastered, nursing qualities tested, and good judgment expressed, listing as a Christian Science nurse in The Christian Science Journal is possible. While Journal-listing is a mile-stone in one's journey as a Christian Science nurse it should in no way imply that mentoring and correction are no longer needed. If Mrs. Eddy, as our Leader, could express her gratitude for "merited rebuke", Journal-listed Christian Science nurses should also be grateful for those they work with, who, through Love, take the risk to point out what needs to be improved in their Christian Science nursing practice. The education of a Christian Science nurse goes on long after training is completed.
Mary Klingbeil Schultz is the Founder and Training Director of World Wide Christian Science Nurses' Training in Deerfield, IL, USA. |
