Little research exists on mentoring programs for nurse practitioner (NP) students. This podcast with Dr. Covelli presents the results of a pilot project aimed to develop, implement, and evaluate a distance program with NP alumni mentoring students across the United States. Most mentees wanted more job-hunting and resume-writing tips; mentors were interested in receiving strategies for mentoring and calendar reminders of important school events. Alumni were interested in helping prepare future NPs by serving as mentors but needed training.

Drs. Lindsay Iverson and Theresa Jizba describe their use of the ELNEC Graduate Curriculum to teach NP students about primary palliative care. Students gained important knowledge about palliative care and importantly developed essential competencies for patient care. 

Nursing programs regularly conduct assessments to gather input from faculty, students, and staff about the effectiveness of the curriculum and the quality of education and academic climate. Process improvements based on these data are made. In the podcast Dr. Danette Cruthirds, Godsgrace Tettyefio, and Dr. Dina Kurzweil describe the creation of an animation to help students appreciate the importance of their feedback in the evaluation process.

In this podcast Dr. Myriam Jean Cadet presents a creative teaching strategy to promote student learning. PlayPosit is an interactive video tool that can be used for formative evaluation to guide the teaching process and support students' achievement of the course learning outcomes. Formative evaluation aids faculty in assessing students' learning, providing constructive feedback to students, and improving own teaching techniques. Faculty can adjust their instructional strategies to help students achieve the course learning outcomes.

Low numbers of new graduate nurses entering careers in primary care are insufficient to meet the demand of the current nursing shortage. Drs. Dolansky and Mitchell describe the Enhancing Nurse Roles in Community Health Fellowship. This Fellowship focuses on increasing undergraduate students' exposure to population health concepts by providing opportunities to practice in primary care settings.

In this podcast Thye Peng Ngo and J'Andra Antisdel report on their study with nearly 1,000 prelicensure nursing students about the students' sleep quality during the COVID-19 pandemic. Students who had hybrid courses (remote combined with  in person) had the worst sleep quality. Learn about strategies we can use as faculty to improve students' sleep quality.

Are you satisfied with your faculty role? What about your work-life balance? Learn about an important study by Dr. Ryan Crawford that examined demographic differences in satisfaction and work-life balance of prelicensure nursing faculty.

Nursing programs are challenged with retaining nurse faculty due to many complex factors, one being the problem of suboptimal transition to the role. This podcast with Dr. Amber Brice Young discusses the results of a study about an innovative strategy to assess the impact of an onboarding and orientation program, the Teaching Excellence Program (TEP), on the transition of newly hired nurse faculty. TEP focuses on the Scholarship of Teaching to slowly orient and mentor newly hired faculty to the multiple roles they have in an academic setting.

If you are teaching online, don't miss this podcast with Dr. Beth Marquez. She describes their Let's Check in for Success strategy and its key initiatives for developing a collaborative learning environment for students and faculty.

Nursing schools need to provide students with the appropriate tools to develop competencies and resources to actualize moral courage to advance health equity and social mission. This podcast with Dr. Asefeh Faraz Covelli describes themes from a study involving 6 nursing programs that exemplify a variety of ways that social mission goals are pursued in different contexts. While each school approaches social mission differently, there are commonalities across cases including a number of necessary factors for schools to advance their social mission goals. Diversity, equity, inclusion, and social determinants of health were integral to the study.