Mentorship is at the heart of nursing

Mentorship is more important than ever in nursing because of the increasing proportion of novice nurses, according to Sunnybrook’s recently retired Patient Care Manager, Mary Glavassevich.

“There is also more importance on wellness and integration, which promotes retention, so there is a need for mentoring at all levels,” says Glavassevich.

Glavassevich is highly regarded as a nursing leader both within Sunnybrook as well as provincially, nationally and internationally. She now has a mentorship award named in her honour.

Sunnybrook’s Mary Glavassevich Excellence in Mentorship Awards recognizes individuals who demonstrate excellence in mentorship and actively promote the career advancement of their staff through educational opportunities.

While helping others to succeed brings her great satisfaction, Glavassevich says it’s a two-way street. “You are developing your staff so they too can become mentors, but you’re also learning from these interactions.”

Glavassevich hails from Montserrat, a British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean with a population of about 5,000. She had always wanted to be a teacher, but ended up following in her older sister’s footsteps and became a nurse instead. In Montserrat, opportunities were limited, so she moved to England before eventually making her way to Canada—where she’s had an opportunity to merge her love of teaching with her love of nursing.

Her career at Sunnybrook began more than four decades ago.

“I appreciate the flexibility in my work environment allowing me to develop strong leadership skills and to focus on things I like to do best. Mentoring and coaching of future leaders has helped to strengthen my own leadership skills,” she says.

These days, mentoring is even more important because of the current nursing shortage, she says, and many new nurses did virtual rotations as part of their academic training during the pandemic.

“So, we need more nurses to be mentored, but in order to do that we need leaders to foster that environment,” she says.

Sunnybrook has leveraged this mentorship philosophy. In addition to the mentorship award, Sunnybrook has created multiple nursing mentorship teams to support those who are new to the profession, or learning about it, and those new to specialty areas like critical care. Mentoring is offered to new nurses, which can help them advance their careers - and help them develop the knowledge, skills and judgement necessary to provide high-quality patient care. Mentors support transitions, as novices may feel a significant gap from their student experience to their area of nursing practice.

A novice nurse shared, “New graduates have so many questions. Being in an environment that is safe to have those questions answered and without feeling like I should know things that are still new to me was very helpful for my development. The mentors and the Sunnybrook team helped with this."

Mary Glavassevich Excellence in Mentorship Awards are a way to bring recognition to the importance of mentorship in healthcare today.

As for Mary Glavassevich, with her ongoing dedication to nursing, she was awarded the 2022 Honorary Lifetime Member Award by the Registered Nurses’ Foundation of Ontario (RNFOO) the Fellowship and Bloomberg Award of Distinction by the University of Toronto, as well as the Leo Steven’s Award for Exemplary Leadership. Most recently, she was honoured as being one of 10 nurses for each decade of the Faculty of Nursing’s 90-year history who has made a global difference in the healthcare community.

Even now that she is retired, she says, “I feel that I must continue to mentor and support staff to reach their full potential. I hope I will leave skills behind that others will follow.”