Health Care Leader - Carolyn Fair

Health Care Leader Interview

Varana Stampley RN

University of Phoenix

NUR492

December 10, 2012

Mentors are to provide a smooth, effective transition into the nursing role; it is necessary for and individual to practice nursing in an safe and effective manner. This paper is and interview with my mentor Carolyn Fair RN, BSN, MS. She has been practicing nursing for approximately 47 years, has been persistence in greater learning and competency as well as a resource to me and others following the career path in nursing.

Carolyn Fair has made contribution in nursing such as mentoring, coaching, precepting, and a visionary of new ideas as well as implementing these ideas. She has the ability to collaborate with different levels of discipline to persuade others to engage in projects, and new orders to better fulfill objectives and outcomes.

An organizational skill is one of her best characteristics in leadership. Being disorganized with the assignments in the beginning of my nursing career was a problem; with her guidance, I realize that I couldn't get task done in a timely manner, if I did not obtain some organizational skills. She was very patience in listening, and understanding of; my needs and thoughts as well as to others. Carolyn is very compassionate about nursing. Communication skills, both written, and verbal are assets that are incorporate through her leadership.

To be open-minded to a variety of proposals put forth in her daily pursuit for the profection in her delivery on nursing practice is a personal philosophy in her leadership. She believes that nursing is forever changing new ways of accomplishing task for the better to fulfill quality care for patients. Transitional nurses tend to look at new things in and old way, and from establish policy and procedures. It become difficult for them to see things in a different perspective, they become tunnel vision. (Sullivan & Decker, 2009) Carolyn would always say, there is always something in nursing that you could learn, which is why there is continuous education in nursing, but you can't learn if you are closed minded, and not acceptant to learn.

Her 1st influential nursing experience occured when her Director of Nursing (DON) on a med-surgical unit had the confidence in her ability and toke the responsibility to elect her a charge nurse on the unit. Her responsibility was team assignments, delegating duties, transcribing orders, full shift responsibility of the staff on the unit. This made it easier to direct the nursing staff because they know she has the experience and the knowledge: She was once was a staff nurse on the unit, which enable her to obtain the knowledge of what it takes to run a med-surgical unit efficiently. After completing RN program at a BSN level, she had the opportunity to be Assistance Director of Nursing (ADON) on an acute telemetry unit for geritonlogical nursing. At that time it was a shortage of staff for geriatric nurses, she form a working relationship with registry nurses, where they allowed her to schedule them full time in order to maintain full nursing status. This experience enable her to know what it takes to staff a unit, she could share this experience with other nurses in training. Her experience that she gained from being a risk manager in health care gave her the opportunity to lead nurses in health care in another perspective, from a legal standpoint. During that time her responsibility was to manage the medical malpractice claims program by conducting education programs, investigating, and analyzing protection litigations to the organization. Other responsibility's in which she gained experience that was influential in her leadership role, was conducting patient relations/risk management in-services meetings with the nurses, which in prove quality of care among the health care team. The investigation of incidents, reviewing all occurrences, at this time gave her the experience of developing and implementing corrective measures at that.

Nurses are no longer direct care givers. We