A Nurse First

Create space

• Sigma Nursing • Season 5 • Episode 5

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From creating a groundbreaking peer mentoring program to navigating leadership roles with strategic focus, Benita Chatmon's story is a testament to the power of mentorship in achieving long-term goals. By prioritizing her time and commitments based on her professional goals and understanding the importance of saying "yes" to opportunities that align with her objectives, Benita exemplifies the value of mentorship in guiding career decisions and achieving long-term success.

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These areas that I find important to me when it comes to my research interests really is about life experiences. So I remember being a young nurse and just not feeling like I had that support that you need when you're trying to figure it out. And I always ask myself, what if everybody had mentors in Welcome to A Nurse First. This is Benita Chatmon telling I never thought I was going to be a nurse, to be honest. I actually wanted to be a pediatrician. I joined the military still in high school. I was 16. In fact, I remember my parents had to sign for me to join. I went to boot camp in between high school and college. And I remember being in, I was a freshman in school and got the word that I was going to be deployed. It was right after 9-11, went to Kuwait. And my journey in Kuwait as a 19-year-old was gosh, medical school is going to be a long time. So, you know, thinking about like, what's the next thing? My mom's a nurse. And so I said, well, maybe I can do what I love through nursing. And I changed my trajectory right there. I decided that I was going to be a nurse, but I also love to teach. You know, I went to school undergrad, went and worked in the clinical area, went right back to school because I knew I wanted to teach, got my master's, eventually got my PhD, and I started teaching. And, you know, while teaching is the core of what I do, really the core of who I am is to lead. I've also learned that if you don't create space for others, you don't give them the opportunity to grow beyond With this in mind, Benita decided to study mentoring in her master's program, focusing on its impact on new graduates' experiences in retention for her thesis. Then during her PhD, she examined mentoring's influence on job satisfaction among nurse educators. Despite her deep passion for the topic, she didn't anticipate that all her research would one day converge into a huge real-world I created and developed a peer mentoring program here at LSU Health Sciences Center. Now I'm now creating a formal mentorship program for our state as far as our nursing association. Before the peer mentor program was even a thing, it was an academic success task force that was developed and created by my dean wanted it to happen and I was leading that task force. The task force job or what we're given was we were supposed to go investigate all of the various things that students need in order to thrive and to be successful. What we saw was we were admitting underrepresented minority students, but we weren't graduating them. And so we were like, we got to be intentional about making sure that every student, no matter their background, every student that came into, that was admitted into our school of nursing graduated. That was our goal. We wanted to make sure that everybody was successful. But we also took ownership, like, are we creating supportive mechanisms to make sure that they're able to graduate? So we came back with the report. The report was phenomenal. It had all the various things from not only mentorship, but we had immersion programs in there. We had tutoring. We had all the various things that students, if you could give them all of these tools, they would be successful. All those tools, though, require money. So what we have in our schools, we have various professions that faculty can apply for. And each of the professions have their own goals and priorities. Well, this one that I picked, that allowed me really to focus on an area that you find important and for me that was mentoring. So I wanted to see about how do we create a peer mentoring program that would help to support students academically. but really also to cultivate them into this new setting. Because for us, all students that come into our program are coming from another institution. So they're not starting here. So they're coming from another institution. And for some people, it is really a lot. It's really difficult for them to transition. Some of them feel alone because they may be coming from another institution with nobody they know. And so how do we create that support in a way that really helps them to continue to matriculate through our program and be successful and eventually graduate? So that's what I focused on with that particular mentoring program. It was really about creating connections. And it also gave me some money to help to support that. So I was like, well, let me see if I can take a glimpse of, not the whole plan, but just let me just do the mentoring piece. And so what we did was basically we have an academic success coordinator who helped me to develop the structure of that, how we would house that program. We also create a space on our website where we'd have information on all the peer mentors and that way that mentees could see the values of these mentors to see if there was somebody more aligned to them. We had scheduled training. We had time each semester where we would put out the call. It became its own thing. The truth of the matter is, it also became very overwhelming because that's just a little piece of what I do. The mentoring aspect wasn't my job, per se. we needed more support. And so luckily, you know how everything just aligns, we got that grant. And so that grant allowed us to hire a full time program coordinator for the whole grant. But that person could also take ownership or a sense of some part in the administrative aspect of continuing that mentorship program on. But it's also bringing on other supportive mechanisms, like I mentioned, which is like coaching and I'm tutoring and, you know, we're a health science center. So it makes us very much unique because we were not really that traditional university where you have an academic success center that really houses a lot of that supportive mechanism. So it does make us unique in a sense that we're a health science center that's still creating supportive mechanisms Beyond being an assistant dean, nurse researcher, and lead on this mentoring program, you are also Sigma's region six coordinator, president of Louisiana State Nursing Association, and involved in many other committees and task forces. How do you prioritize your time My belief is really about serving and serving in my profession and leading with a sense of dignity and honor. I think for me, what I've found is you want to do it all, but the reality is you cannot do it all. That's some of the things I teach my mentees because I don't want them to, you know, they're always like, I want to be like you, Dr. Chapman. I say, no, don't be like me. Be like you. Be like you. And one thing I'm going to teach you about that is understanding what your yeses need to be and what your nos. Does it suit you in this season? And how do I know that it suits me in this season? We go back to your goals. What's your professional goals? Once you know what you want to do, then start thinking about what does it take to get there? What do you want to achieve in this season? And does this match? Does this get you there? This may be great. Yes, it may be something great to do, but it's not going to get you to this goal. But this one will. So you're going to say no to this. You'll say no and maybe next time. And you'll say yes to this because this is going to make me get to the next goal. You get to really be intentional about what you select to do because you know what the end looks like. If I know what the end looks like, then I'm going to create the steps to get there. I think for me, that has always been a challenge because I find myself always saying yes, and I'm learning that years down the road, years. And I have just now, in my 14th year, really sitting down learning what my yeses are and what my noes, and it's still hard because I'm always thinking like, well, I could just add this little thing to my plate, just this little thing. Little things become to be a lot of little things. So that's been my biggest challenge. It can become overwhelming if you don't really sit and focus on what you want to achieve because you find yourself saying, yes, it's too many things that start occupying too much of your time that you cannot focus in on the things that are important and that will allow you to Thank you for listening to A Nurse First from Sigma. If you loved this episode, do us a favor and subscribe, rate, and leave us a review. It is very much appreciated. For more information about A Nurse First and Sigma, visit