Nurse Educator Tips for Teaching

The first day of clinical practice can be an anxiety-provoking experience for students. Nursing faculty can be proactive in reducing anxiety by engaging them in a role-play scenario about what to expect during clinical. Role-play is a proven teaching strategy that helps students learn in a safe environment under faculty guidance and with well-defined boundaries. Dr. Sonique Sailsman discusses this role play in the podcast and teaching tip.

Novice students struggle to apply complex concepts to patient care. The Gallery Walk is a strategy that engages students, promotes critical thinking and clinical reasoning, and helps students prioritize in patient care. In this podcast and article, Kathleen McAdory presents the Gallery Walk that is used with novice students but can be used conceptually in any teaching context.

In this podcast with Dr. Morgan Yordy, you will learn about her 2-hour elective course, titled Animal Assisted Therapy, that explores the human-animal bond, the roles of animals in communities, and their impact on health and wellness. The course is open to all majors and is especially popular among pre-health care students. One assignment of students is a field trip to a local farm, which provides equine programming for children with physical, emotional, and psychological needs.

Climate and planetary health shape the environments in which people live and, therefore, are central to nursing's mission to protect health and reduce inequities. Climate change drives heat-related illness, extreme weather, poor air quality, shifting infectious diseases, and food and water insecurity—all of which increase disease burden and disproportionately harm vulnerable populations. Nurses are often the first and most trusted professionals to encounter these impacts, but they frequently lack formal preparation in this area. In this podcast and article, Dr. Heide Cygan discusses the need for faculty development on climate and planetary health to thread these areas into the curriculum to prepare graduates to care holistically of patients.

Neurodiversity is an umbrella term that describes a wide range of variation in cognition, learning, and behaviors. In this podcast and article, Drs. Cummings and Serembus share inclusive and engaging teaching strategies for neurodivergent students. The strategies incorporate principles of Universal Design for Learning, support social-emotional learning, and provide a sensory-friendly environment that improves learning outcomes of all students.

NurseKind AI (nursekindai.com) transcribes and analyzes real audio recordings of nursing student interactions and gives scored feedback on empathy, therapeutic communication, and clinical judgment in about 90 seconds. Simulation tools cover clinical knowledge through text-based scenarios. NurseKind AI covers the other side: how students actually talk to patients, whether they listen, and whether empathy comes through in the conversation. Built by a psychiatric nurse practitioner and nursing faculty member, NurseKind AI is a solution for programs dealing with faculty shortages and limited assessment time. A free pilot is available, up to 100 assessments, with no commitment. You can contact the developer at [email protected].

Dr. Sotos Djiovanis and Donna Ramos developed a series of AI-assisted formative assignments for in-class group learning in a health assessment course, guided by Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences. The goal was to develop learners' knowledge of course material and learn best practices for using AI generators to create study aids. The in-class work focused on written, pictorial, and video AI-generated content in different weeks. Groups were assigned different topical objectives to develop study aids for. In their article they explain how they integrated the Multiple Intelligences theory into the group work. The interactive Padlet™ collaborative system was used for groups to share and interact in class.

The educational experiences of current nursing students, shaped by unprecedented access to advanced technologies, have made face-to-face communication and therapeutic relationship-building more challenging. Drs. Nelson and Serratt describe their qualitative study on the effectiveness, usability, and trustworthiness of a generative AI tool in helping nursing students improve communication in emotionally intense situations. The study demonstrated AI's potential to support therapeutic communication practices as long as there is faculty training and oversight to maximize pedagogical value.

Dr. Cassie Moffitt created a private Instagram account where students can anonymously ask clarifying questions related to class content. Since most students already use Instagram, the platform was an accessible choice. Each day, the faculty member posts a story with a question box. Students submit questions anonymously, which are answered in the order received through follow-up stories. To ensure continued access, responses are saved as permanent reels. Dr. Moffitt provides other examples of the strategy in her article.

Ethical principles are difficult concepts for students to grasp. In this episode and article, Dr. Valerie Wright discusses an innovative strategy she developed using art as a means to engage students and promote active learning in a leadership course.