Nurse Educator Tips for Teaching

Many faculty teaching in DNP programs lack preparation for guiding DNP student scholarship. A large multicampus college of nursing invested in an interdisciplinary DNP faculty development retreat to increase faculty scholarship and strengthen their ability to mentor DNP student projects. Positive outcomes of the retreat included participants' improved confidence in implementing evidence-based practice quality improvement (EBPQI) methods and an increase in DNP student and faculty publications. In this podcast and article, Drs. Jayne Dunlap and Julee Waldrop describe the retreat and include resources for readers to use in their own programs. They also explain the Mountain Model for EBPQI, which presents a new evidence-searching question as an alternative to the PICO. Their article is open access. Share their article widely with faculty teaching in your DNP program, with your students, and with other educators and clinicians.

Integrating night shift clinical experiences into nursing programs offers unique benefits, fostering essential skills often overlooked during daytime clinicals. For faculty considering this integration, the slower pace and distinct dynamics of night shifts provide diversity for professional growth opportunities among students. This podcast with Dr. Vanessa Segura presents a high-impact teaching strategy that helps students assess, plan, implement, and evaluate care in patients during the night shift. The podcast focuses on a comparison between day shift and night shift learning. Learn more about these experiences in Dr. Segura's Teaching Tip.

Practice-based learning is essential in nurse practitioner (NP) education; however, lack of clinical placement opportunities results in variability in clinical experience. Dr. Erin Ziegler and her team developed 4 virtual simulations (VS) covering concussion management, medical assistance in dying, memory concerns in older adults, and prescribing medical cannabis and evaluated their usability, engagement, and impact across 3 Canadian universities. Students' competencies improved significantly for all of the VS, with highest improvement in concussion management. Scores on the Classroom Instructional Support Perception indicated high usability and engagement with the VS, underscoring their effectiveness. Read more about the development of these VS in their Article.

Student development of communication skills is essential for professional practice. To address this, a structured peer review process was implemented in a beginning nursing course, providing students with opportunities to engage in scholarly discourse, refine their writing, and practice crucial conversations in a supportive environment. The teaching strategy involved 3 peer reviews throughout the semester. In this podcast and article, Dr. Kristen Tobin and Christina Buxton explain how they structured the peer review process across the semester and its impact on students' communication skills and confidence.

Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs) engage learners at lower levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. In this podcast, Dr. Andrew Richards and Mr. Zachary Hall discuss how they developed a CAT known as the Five-Minute Peer Writing Activity to promote engagement at a higher level among students in the classroom setting. Read more about this innovative, interprofessional strategy in their article in Nurse Educator.

Evidence-based guidelines about textbook selection in nursing are lacking. Lucille Downing discussed their study to identify the essential characteristics in nursing textbooks based on a survey of faculty members across the United States.Faculty had a strong preference for textbooks emphasizing clinical judgment and application to practice, with content being the top priority. Additionally, instructor resources, such as test banks and teaching strategies, were prioritized within supplemental resources. Few participants reported formal training in textbook selection. Details about the study are provided in their article.

An unfolding case study for a complex concept such as chronic pain management can be scaffolded across a curriculum to better prepare future nurses for practice. This podcast with Dr. Kari Firestone presents a 4-term unfolding case study that was developed to address gaps in students' learning. It was aligned with the American Association of College of Nursing Essentials and followed a patient from acute to chronic pain transition. Details are provided in their article.

Are your students unclear about the purpose of evidence-based practice (EBP) and need to learn this content? Listen to this podcast with Dr. Cassandra Ford and read her article. She developed a strategy to help students connect EBP to other nursing courses: the Course Connection Table. She shares the Course Connection Table with readers.

Nurse educators often face challenges in highlighting the clinical relevance of evidence-based practice (EBP) and quality improvement (QI) in undergraduate nursing courses. To address this, faculty collaborated with clinical partners to create a novel strategy aimed at bridging the gap between classroom learning and clinical application. Students used unit-based report cards for a fictional hospital, EBP General Hospital, modeled after real-world trends in patient outcomes established within the partnering academic hospital. Report cards were created for distinct units and emphasized trends of nurse-sensitive indicators. Bryce Catarelli, Jamie Dees, and Akela Edwards describe this teaching strategy in this podcast and article.

Critical care nurse practitioners have few opportunities to care for obstetric patients in the critical care setting and, therefore, may lack competence and confidence in caring for them. In this podcast, Jennifer Brower and Caitlin Luebcke describe their work and insights from an integration of obstetric-focused, multimodal instruction in an acute care nurse practitioner program. They share more details about their strategies for integration of a critical care obstetric curriculum in a nurse practitioner program and describe the challenges and opportunities they experienced in their article.