Connect

When Jennifer “JJ” Johnson, RN, passes by the photos of certified nurses and their degrees in the Heart & Vascular Center, she feels mixed emotions. She’s proud to work at a Magnet-recognized hospital and feels good that she helped reinstall the photo wall after her clinic’s move. Yet she also longs to one day see a photo of herself on that wall.

“I hung many of those photos myself, so I know there’s no room left,” she laughs.

Her mentor Peggy Dame, RN, veteran Clinician 4, is quick to disagree. “Oh, don’t you worry, we will add a new row!” she smiles.

Peggy and JJ are part of UVA Health’s nursing mentorship program launched in January 2017, which pairs BSN nurses with nurses who are going back to school to earn their degree. JJ started her career at UVA Health in 2019, and enrolled in the RN-to-BSN Program the following year.

As luck would have it, JJ’s preceptor, Peggy, had signed up to be a mentor, but her mentee was a no-show. JJ jumped at the opportunity. “Can I be your mentee instead?” she asked. Peggy’s immediate answer was "yes."

After contracts were signed, the pair set their sights on JJ’s BSN. “We just hit it off,” says Peggy. “JJ is highly motivated and hard-working and we have similar outgoing personalities. We’re not bashful."

Though the nursing mentorship program requires participants to meet once a month for six months, JJ and Peggy have been meeting regularly in their shared office for over a year. When she can’t help in a particular area, Peggy finds someone who can.

Recently, she asked Michael Salerno, MD, PhD, who she knew had a statistics degree, if he would be willing to help with JJ’s statistics class. “I didn’t want to bother Dr. Salerno,” says JJ, “but you would not believe how accommodating and nice he was! He showed me how to use Excel to do statistics and helped me with my last paper. Peggy is really intelligent and knows how to talk to people. She has given me the confidence to ask for help.”

Peggy has always loved mentoring, but she feels a special connection with JJ. “I was a child of Irish immigrants,” she explains. “There wasn’t money at the time for me to attend a four-year college.”

Like JJ, she graduated high school with a diploma in nursing and went on to get her BSN years later, in 1988. “JJ’s story in some ways marries my own. I know all the hurdles you have to jump through. I know what it’s like not to have an answer when people ask you what school you went to. Once I finally got that degree, it felt so good to say, ‘I went to UMass Boston.’”

JJ looks forward to the day she too has her degree. It hasn’t been easy to juggle work, school, family, and a pandemic. “There were plenty of days I was so down after working all day and having to go home and write a five-page paper,” she says. “Peggy was always there as my cheerleader, reminding me, ‘We’re almost there!’ I probably would have given up if I didn’t have her.”

Peggy strongly encourages her colleagues to become mentors. "People helped me in my career, so it feels important and good to be able to give back,” she says. “By mentoring the next generation of nurses, we’ll be able to look back and say, ‘We left things in really good shape.’ And one day, JJ will be doing this for someone who needs her helping hand. It all comes full circle.”

For more information and to sign-up for one of the RN Mentorship Programs, check out the Mentorship website.