Nurse Educator Tips for Teaching

If you are interested in developing an interprofessional course to teach the concept of big data, this podcast and article are for you. Dr. Margaret Jeanne Calcote discusses the course they developed that introduces students from the schools of nursing, medicine, and pharmacy to the use of big data in health care. Students use the academic medical center’s Patient Cohort Explorer software application to access electronic health record data. Dr. Calcote explains how the competencies nursing students demonstrated in this course align with the new AACN Essentials.

Gamification is an approach that can be used to introduce interprofessional collaboration in nursing and health science. Dr. Valerie Wright developed an innovative card game, COLLABORATE, to introduce students to interprofessional practice. In this podcast she explains how they created and tested COLLABORATE.

Read their article (it is open access) and share with others. More information about the game COLLABORATE and where to obtain it can be found here.

In this podcast Dr. Rinaldi explains backward design and provides an example of using backward design for developing a neonatal nursing seminar course for baccalaureate students. She provides additional details about background design in her article.

In this podcast, Dr. Ginger Schroers describes the development and testing of a behavioral strategy (Stay SAFE) to manage interruptions in one’s daily workflow. She also provides practical strategies for dealing with interruptions to everyday professional tasks and ultimately decrease errors and increase patient safety.

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Students need to develop proficiency in psychomotor skills. Paired with deliberate practice, mastery learning strategies can build skill competence among learners and prepare them for clinical practice. Kaitlyn Burke discusses how a psychomotor and procedural skill framework, blended learning, a video evaluation platform, and an electronic tracking tool were implemented for skill development and retention throughout an undergraduate curriculum.

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Preceptors for prelicensure nursing students are essential in successfully transitioning students to com­petent practitioners. As students prepare to launch their professional careers, experiences with precep­tors can significantly impact their learning. In this podcast and article, Dr. Mary Goering presents a preceptor-education toolkit that helps recruit, educate, and retain preceptors.

Dr. Goering has  created a version of the toolkit that you can use and adapt for your school. The toolkit is available at this link: Prelicensure Nursing Student Preceptor Resource Toolkit—Template for Dissemination

Participant roles can vary with simulation. Some roles involve providing direct care during the simulation, whereas other roles involve observing the simulation either in the simulation environment or in another room with audiovisual capabilities. In this podcast, Dr. Barbara Hooper and Professor Nancy Carlson share the findings of their quasi-experimental study to determine whether knowledge acquisition was influenced by role assignment (primary or secondary nurse, family member, or observer) when participating in a high-fidelity simulation among 267 participants. There was a significant increase in the mean score for knowledge acquisition for all participants and no difference based on the role assignment in the simulation. Knowledge acquisition is possible regardless of the role played in a high-fidelity simulation.

Learn more about the study in their article. 

An undergraduate leadership course should foster clinical judgment and communication while embracing diversity, equity, and inclusivity in nursing practice. Promoting student engagement through experimental and competency-based learning is also key. Students in an undergraduate leadership course were assigned completed a Hot Topic/Hot Take assignment to incorporate concepts found in the AACN Essentials and prepare them for leadership positions in nursing. Learn more about this creative strategy in this podcast with Dr. Nancy Jo Thompson and Dr. Rumay Alexander. Be sure to read their Teaching Tip.

Test-taking is a prominent cause of anxiety for nursing students. Test anxiety may interfere with academic performance, program completion, and successful transition to practice. Dr. Cristen Walker shares the results of her study that examined differences between test anxiety in nursing and nonnursing students. She discusses implications of the findings and supportive strategies nurse educators can use to help students.

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Many nursing students experience high levels of stress throughout their nursing program. When stress occurs, the student is prompted to seek a balance using available coping mechanisms. Dr. Rebecca Liljestrand describes a 10-week resiliency program with weekly 50- to 75-minute sessions. Each session has the same format: students share a response to a homework assignment and how they used a strength during the past week; participate in a guided mindfulness practice; engage in a resilience presentation; write a response to related research with prompts such as “what I am good at” and “a time when I was resilient;” and share their writings in small breakout groups. The session closes with the three As: an affirmation,  appreciation, or appraisal.

Their article provides more detail on the resiliency program and its outcomes.