A great mentor will illuminate a path

A Good Mentorship Program Can Help Limit Uncertainty

by admin

A great mentor will illuminate a path

A Good Mentorship Program Can Help Limit Uncertainty

by admin

by admin

The MDS RAI process can be stressful and confusion to many Skilled Nursing Facility Leaders. Many times, SNF leaders are hosting or attending staff meeting with nonsufficient knowledge related to the subject matter.  Being an leader and mentor is one of those few jobs where your path is not charted out for you. No one cares about your past experience, no one will hold your hand when things get difficult and no one will sugar coat their belief in your potential.

A great mentor and leader provides a solution to help illuminate the path while alerting others to unforeseen challenges.

One of the few certainties in this journey is that you don’t know what you don’t know. In skilled nursing care,  several common problems will occur that can affect overall outcomes in MDS reporting: staffing, documentation challenges, compliance, survey tags, knowledge gaps, new regulations.

The items we were blind to: our initially incorrect positioning within our setting, the time it would take to actually establish operational efficiency and how our metrics would fair in the changing environment. Skilled Nursing Management requires an array of sharp leaderships skills to assist team members to feel and be there best. This is vital for overall staff and Resident satisfaction. Mentoring programs are a powerful way to engage staff and leadership teams.  Especially as the competition for talent continues to intensify, and upcoming changes to policy, compliance, Quality Reporting, and reimbursement and eminent, the need for mentorship and support for SNF staff continues to grow. Here are 4 Benefits of mentorship program.

 Helps to Identify Knowledge Gaps     

Being able to accept that you or your facility will need some guidance is the first step to seeking out a great mentorship program .

Skilled Nursing leaders often try to reinvent the wheel and ignore guidance from experts. There’s a tendency to believe components of the problems can be solved in the same way as the past. This may not always be the case. There are mentors to help you avoid mistakes.

Seeking out a mentorship program takes research into the areas need the most.  Identifying multiple areas of need for a mentorship program, can also prove beneficial.

Helps Boost Overall Morale

There are many reasons to miss out on having great mentorship program in place at you facility. One common reason is the fear of lack of time, or time removed from providing Quality of Care Services to our residents. Providing the staff a place for gaining  professional development skills has proved to boost morale for overall satisfaction.

One way to approach potential mentorship is to see it as a level of advancement for all staff involved.

Another important way to approach mentorship is to come to the table ready to learn. Whether it’s a one-time intervention or a lifelong mentorship, time spent with someone who is committed to investing in your development should always be valued. At least initially, it is your responsibility to drive the relationship and work with your mentor to establish the expectations and desired outcomes.

Allows Efficiency in Care Services Rendered

Once you have a mentor in place, you’ll want to prepare for your first meeting so you don’t waste their time. Prepare a list of questions, topics or subject matters that would be good conversation starters and help cover what you’re hoping to learn.

Here are a few questions to get you started:

  • What is the most important thing I should be doing that I’m not doing now?
  • What are the critical things we need to get right?
  • What are the big risks that we should anticipate?
  • Do I have the right team?
  • How do you spend most of your time?
  • What are your most successful habits?
  • Who else should I be surrounding myself with?

Keeps Staff Attentive

The great advice you are going to get from your mentor can come from your questions, but much of what you learn from them will be through absorption of their habits and mannerisms.

Being closely surrounded with mentors has changed how I approach all sorts of situations: what to say to the top executives to guarantee a meeting, how to build a strong network and use it regularly to strategically grow the company, how to start every day by visualizing and rehearsing events, how to constantly push everyone around me to their full potential, how to maintain confidence and cope with tremendous uncertainty and bad news.

These are not things that one learns from management books or exercises. You must surround yourself with people frequently and consistently enough to a point where you naturally absorb these behaviors.

It’s important to remember that mentors will not solve problems for you. A true mentor will cause you to ask the right questions that help you get to where you want to be and they’ll call you out when they know you’re accepting less of yourself, your vision or your team. They’ll help you frame your problem and they’ll help you check the assumptions and belief systems that are holding you back so you spend less time spinning your wheels and wasting precious capital.

So get out there, accept criticism, ask questions, absorb new habits and take business advice from seasoned vets. You’ll be thankful you did.

Post from mdstraininginstitute.com

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