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FOSTERING LEADERSHIP THROUGH COLLABORATION

Dana J. Olive

Reflections of a young faculty member

by Dana J. Olive

My first year of teaching was a challenging one. As a psychiatric nurse, I always knew that understanding interpersonal relationships was important, but I had no idea of how important it was to an educator. During that first year, I met nursing students who were victims of child and partner abuse, students who were actively addressing psychiatric issues with family members as well as themselves, and others who were actively mourning the death of a loved one. Some stories were so awful I wouldn’t dare mention them in print. All I can say is, “Thank you, Hildegard Peplau. While you may no longer be with us, your work in the study of interpersonal relationships helped me survive my first year of teaching.”

It is so easy to forget that students come to us with issues. Being a student is just a small portion of one’s life, yet some educators have the expectation that students will come to class and leave personal issues at the door.

At a conference, a fellow educator told me, “You know, I’m not a counselor. Students are students for the three hours I have them. Their emotional baggage can’t come in the room with them.”

It’s not realistic, however, to expect students to dissociate from themselves for three hours to “just be a student.” One student actually apologized to me for having a dying mother-in-law. She said that if she received a call about her mother-in-law’s death while I was lecturing, she would not leave class unless I said it was OK. Another student, who showed up at clinicals dressed in a black suit the day of a family member’s funeral, told me she could miss the funeral if I required that she stay the whole day.

Both students were surprised when I said their families were important, and they should be with them to mourn. To maintain their student roles, they were willing to separate themselves from their roles as family members.

Their responses seemed so automatic and consistent with each other that I wondered: Have we conditioned students to be “students only” in our presence? As nurses, we do not hesitate to say that our patients are holistic human beings, but students are also holistic human beings. Educators need to recognize that students’ personal issues impact how they experience their education and how they interact with the educator and other students.

Educators should revisit Peplau’s statements on interpersonal relationships with patients and apply those concepts to their relationships with students. She identified specific nursing roles, including the stranger, the resource person, the teacher, the leader, the surrogate and the counselor. “It is likely,” Peplau maintained, “that the nursing process is educative and therapeutic when nurse and patient can come to know and to respect each other, as persons who are alike, and yet different, as persons who share in the solutions of problems” (Peplau, 1952, p. 9). The relationship between educator and student is also a collaborative sharing between individuals seeking to understand and solve problems.

The stranger
The stranger is “an individual with whom another individual is not acquainted” (Peplau, 1991, p. 44). I have learned that each student I encounter is different. We each come to the educational experience with unique backgrounds. Our past experiences shape how we experience our present relationships.

The resource person
“A resource person provides specific answers to questions usually formatted with relation to a larger problem” (Peplau, 1991, p. 47). I am a resource person to my students. I support them in development of safe nursing practice and also in their personal development. Students need mentors for both personal and professional growth.

The teacher
“Learning through experience, which is the kind [of learning] that nurses wish to promote, requires development of novel plans and situations that can lead to open-ended outcomes that are beneficial to nurse and patient” (Peplau, 1991, p. 48). One of the greatest gifts an educator can provide is to support students in creating their own conclusions about their education. Education is part of a greater journey of personal development. By acknowledging that the educational experience is only one leg of a lifetime journey, students learn to view themselves and their goals holistically.

The leader
“All members are accepted as they are, interest being centered on the problem” (Peplau, 1991, p. 49). The role of the leader is to provide an environment where all participants can actively share in decision-making. The strict hierarchy between professor and student can be detrimental to developing inquiry by the student. I tell my students we are a team, and we work together as colleagues. This approach stimulates decision-making in students relative to patient care because we share responsibility. One student told me, “I always felt that I could share my ideas.” Educators lead by creating a collaborative environment for learning, which fosters a student’s sense of inquiry.

The surrogate
“Outside of his awareness, the patient views the nurse as someone else; he does not see her as a person in her own way” (Peplau, 1991, p. 51). Because illness can make patients feel vulnerable, Peplau believed they may look to a nurse as they do to a mother, to provide security and love. Students who experience tragedies may look to educators for support in much the same way. Educators can’t provide solutions to student issues, but we can be present to support students in finding solutions. Educators, much like parents, can be a stabilizing force for students.

The counselor
“Counseling in nursing has to do with helping the patient to remember and to understand fully what is happening to him in the current situation so that the experience can be integrated rather than dissociated from other experiences” (Peplau, 1991, p. 64). Students are integrated, whole human beings. A student shouldn’t be expected to dissociate and just be “the student” in my presence. As an educator, I can process with the student how their student role can be integrated into the picture of their whole life. An educator can also help a student integrate the idea that being an educated professional is part of a lifetime journey of personal growth, thereby helping them to embrace the future.

A final story
I was speaking with a student about the academic advising process, and she expressed how thankful she was to have a specific experienced faculty member as her adviser. As a new faculty member looking to improve my own advising skills, I asked her what was so special about this particular faculty member. She responded, “This faculty member is different. She’s special. When she sits down with me, she looks me in the eye. Before she looks at my classes, she looks at me and says, ‘Tell me how you are doing.’ She doesn’t mean school. She means me. She sees I’m not just a student. I’m many more things.” RNL

Dana J. Olive, MSN, CRNP, is an assistant professor at La Salle University in Philadelphia, Pa., and a student in the Doctor of Nursing Science program at Widener University in Chester, Pa.

References

Peplau, H. (1952). Interpersonal relations in nursing: Offering a conceptual frame of reference for psychodynamic nursing. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons.

Peplau, H. (1991). Interpersonal relations in nursing: A conceptual frame of reference for psychodynamic nursing. New York: Springer.