Nurse Educator Tips for Teaching

Fostering a sense of belonging in the classroom is important for student engagement. An impactful way to build this sense of belonging is by opening class with a student-created slideshow. Students contribute a single PowerPoint slide featuring something that bring them joy, such as photos of family, friends, pets, hobbies, or favorite quotes. The educator then compiles these slides into a continuous presentation that plays as students arrive to class. By including each student's unique perspective, the classroom atmosphere becomes more inclusive. Supplemental Digital Content with the article includes contributions from both an educator and a student.

Individual simulation allows students to think critically, perform nursing care, and intervene on abnormal findings, while simultaneously allowing faculty to provide appropriate coaching. Faculty developed 2 formative, individual, simulation activities incorporating multiple practice opportunities over time, clinical coaching, meaningful feedback, and reflection to enhance clinical reasoning and judgment development. The authors describe these individualized simulations and their outcomes in the podcast and article.

Unique features of RN-Baccalaureate programs can make implementation of the AACN Essentials more challenging. In this podcast, you'll learn about findings from a needs assessment conducted by members of the National RN-Baccalaureate (RN-B) Faculty Forum. They explain some of the major challenges RN-B programs face related to the Essentials, and they describe resources such as a curricular mapping tool and checklist that RN-B educators can use to facilitate program alignment with AACN Essentials. Access more information and their resources in their Nurse Educator article.

Nursing clinical judgment is a concept that resonates with nurse educators. This topic coincides with the National Council of State Board of Nursing clinical judgment model, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing Essentials, state boards of nursing, and employer and public importance. As such, it is vital to incorporate clinical judgment into nursing education. This podcast with Dr. Sara Lewandowski presents an engaging and active learning experience to promote effective assessment and critical thinking skills in students. You can read more about this strategy in her article.

Nursing faculty vacancies reduce the numbers of students entering the nursing profession, exacerbating the health care workforce crisis. Resilience, known to mitigate occupational burnout, may play a role in retaining existing prelicensure nursing faculty. Dr. Hope Jones describes their study on faculty resilience. They found that compassion satisfaction and perceived support were significant predictors of resilience. Dr. Jones shares implications for schools of nursing. More details are shared in their article.

Drs. Cori Heier and Ashley McMath share their active learning strategy to prepare students for applying for their first job. The strategy has 3 components: resume building by analyzing 5 de-identified RN resumes, critiquing them in small groups, and creating their own resumes; analysis of 4 pictures of people dressed in various attires for their nursing job interview; and a interview "speed dating" session. Learn more in their article.

To prepare the next generation of nurses with strong skills in self-care to enhance their well-being and increase resilience, strategies for self-care practices should be introduced in the undergraduate program. In this podcast, Drs. Ludy Llasus and Patricia Nill discuss an in-class activity that creates space for students to write a self-care prescription to cultivate personal and professional resilience, focusing on fostering their well-being. Learn about this strategy in their teaching tip.

Guided by the tenets of Kolcaba's holistic comfort theory, Dr. April Braswell explains how they developed, implemented, and evaluated a simulated online pediatric advanced practice health center. The Pediatric Comfy Care Clinic (PCCC) was created to enhance person-centered diagnostic reasoning and holistic advanced management skills for family nurse practitioner students. Learn more about the PCCC in their article.

Learn how a nurse educator and a teaching and learning librarian at Western Washington University created an innovative approach to teaching digital information literacy. In this podcast, Emily Spracklin and Christine Espina used professional fact-checker strategies, a reflection notebook, and an information literacy framework to develop student competency in information evaluation skills. Read their article for more details about how they teach students to sift credible information from a myriad of online sources and engage in patient-centered communication and education.

Interprofessional education (IPE) is important for health professions students, but advanced practice nursing students often lack opportunities to practice interprofessional care in ambulatory scenarios. A team of health professions educators designed an interprofessional simulation focused on the ambulatory care setting and implemented it with health science students at a large midwestern university. Family and psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner students, along with students from undergraduate nursing, medicine, pharmacy, audiology, dental hygiene, social work, and physical therapy, participated in the virtual interprofessional simulation. In this podcast, Dr. Lisa Rohrig describes the simulation, its development, and the outcomes. The authors provide more detail in their article.