Post by Patience James, MPH, MSc International Nursing, RN.
CamAWiSE aims to support women who pursue education and a career in STEMM. We coordinate a six-month mentoring programme where women can be paired with a mentor to help them explore career options or work toward professional development goals. In 2022, we partnered with Sierra Leone AWiSE to welcome a group of African mentees in the third cohort of the programme. In this post, one of the mentees, Patience James, shares her experience participating in the programme and the highlights from her interactions with her mentor and programme activities.
As a recent public health graduate with a background in nursing and midwifery, I understand the importance of scientific writing and publication in advancing evidence-based practice.
I learnt about the CamAWISE Mentoring Programme through Dr. Bridget Bannerman, leader of Sierra Leone AWiSE and who has been an important source of inspiration for my career and personal development. While the programme seemed appealing, I was also anxious about joining the programme. A cascade of preconceived ideas about the potential complexities of mentorship rocked my busy mind. But I decided to take the step and participate as a mentee and my mindset about mentorship has changed as a result.
Orientation and goal alignment
Aligning one’s professional goals to mentoring objectives is a critical driver to the success of any mentoring program.
To start with, the orientation program session at the beginning of the program set the pace for understanding the goals and objectives of the mentorship. I found my interest embedded in two out of the proposed goals: “learn more about preparing manuscripts and publications and broaden your research network and/or establish a new collaboration”. The communication about the mentoring programme was clear, consistent, and well-structured for meaningful engagement. I was matched with mentor Dr. Penny Coggill. Through the interactions with my mentor, as well as Dr. Bridget Bannerman, and Iratxe Puebla (CamAWiSE Co-Chair), I developed confidence, new knowledge, and competency in scientific writing, the research publication process, and collaboration. This re-awakened my knowledge-seeking behavior through evidence-based critical reviews, CV reviews, and abstract reviews.
Such commitment and dedication are reflective of passion, interest, and great mentorship which characterised my experience at the CamAWiSE Mentoring programme. Besides, learning from new role models from Africa with incredible research pedigrees formed a foundation to develop my understanding of the scope and application of research evidence in context. By clearly articulating my professional goals at the start of the programme, I was more organised and pursued the right activities in line with my personal goals.
Mentee calls and goal setting
Key mindset theories hold the view that beliefs about knowledge influence motivation, attitude, and learning behavior and this reflects my own experience. Changes in my mentality about knowledge had a profound influence on my motivation for research publication because every meeting with my mentor had a designated goal which we approached with an open mind and enthusiasm. As a health professional with a public health, nursing, and midwifery background, I understood the importance of evidence-based practice – the systematic process of evidence synthesis, as well as its importance in policy development and health improvement. In this light, my mentor’s eye for detail meant no error went unnoticed during our scheduled mentorship calls.
Additionally, my CV received constructive reviews like never before. In fact, I had positive feedback from a job application as a result. The way my mentor dissected my manuscript abstract was invaluable. With her input, I reviewed my CV and my approach to critical analysis of the literature, as well as the test of measurement instrument validity and reliability. This proved helpful during a further review of a dataset I was working on at the time.
Benefits of mentoring
In 2020, I missed an opportunity to collaborate with a university in the UK on an initiative I manage in Uganda due to a lack of awareness of the guiding principles for successful research collaboration. During the mentee-mentor goal-setting calls as part of the programme, I developed research and project planning skills I can leverage to manage any future research collaboration opportunities. Consequently, I am ready and equipped to collaborate with researchers in my fields of interest: antimicrobial resistance capacity building for frontline health workers such as nurses, understanding the migration journey and health-seeking behavior of refugees in Uganda, and promoting safe maternal and child health in Africa.
As part of mentoring, dealing with constructive criticism was a learning curve. There was often a lightning rod for something; however, my mentor’s open approach made it a lot easier to navigate the feedback and embrace new ways of managing my research and its outputs. By the end of these sessions – I observed improvement in my understanding of research applications in science, and my CV became more focused and tailored to my core areas of interest, providing a reference for future job applications. I also rewrote my manuscript abstract and now have a better understanding of the different stages of scientific publication and research collaboration. Besides, it was heart-warming to genuinely be accountable to a female scientist with a rich educational background.
The mentoring programme inspired a sense of direction and satisfaction that instilled the confidence to partner and collaborate with individuals and organisations in Africa, the UK, and other parts of the world where need be. Without CamAWISE, I would be stuck in my held belief about the complexity of the research, publication process, and collaboration. This would have been a barrier to my progression in a research path. Thanks to my mentor Dr. Penny Coggill and other CamAWISE team members, for the precious opportunity to participate in the mentoring programme.
Interested in our Mentoring programme? We’ll run a further cohort of the mentoring programme in 2023 so do reach out or sign up for our newsletter to keep up-to-date on news about the start of the programme – contact us at info@camawise.org.uk.
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