Nurse Educator Tips for Teaching

The focus on self-care and self-advocacy in nursing is particularly significant for students in advanced practice nursing (APN) programs given the high rates of burnout among APNs. Drs. Davis, Lysaght, and Mullins designed and implemented coursework to prepare graduate nursing students in their APN program for the demands of clinical practice. One of their assignments used a 2-part interactive case study to explore self-care and personal well-being of an APN working in a busy primary care setting. The case study was designed to reflect real-world challenges faced by APNs to encourage students to critically assess workplace stressors and recognize the significance of self-advocacy in sustaining a fulfilling professional career. Learn more about the case study in their article.

Compassionate care is essential for positive patient outcomes and nurse well-being. Current models are largely practice-focused and not integrated into a nursing curriculum. Thus, new nurses are often unprepared to deliver compassionate care. In this podcast and article, Dr. Lori Brodie discusses a strategy to nurture compassion as a professional identity.

Dr. Kelly Pruden shares her innovative "Build Your Dream Unit – Nurse Recruitment Challenge," where students design an innovative clinical unit and then compete to recruit peers to work there. In this activity, small groups design a specialty unit (eg, ICU, Labor & Delivery, Medical-Surgical) incorporating evidence-based principles of healthy work environments, nurse well-being, and recruitment strategies. Dr. Pruden believes nursing students deserve to practice leadership long before they inherit it on the job.

The Know, Want, Learn, Apply, and Question (KWLA+Q) strategy is an effective tool for fostering student engagement in online discussion threads. KWLA+Q not only enhances student participation and collaborative learning but also supports faculty in creating a responsive and dynamic online learning environment. Drs. Pascucci and Michaels describe the strategy and give examples of its use in online discussions. They provide more detail in their article.

Unconscious bias refers to attitudes and beliefs about certain people or groups of people that affect understanding, decisions, and actions. Early-semester nursing students are perfectly positioned to learn about unconscious bias and strategies to mitigate it. In the podcast and article, Dr. Natasha Morris shares a simple exercise she developed for students to highlight these biases. During a post-clinical conference, students are presented with a scenario where the world is ending, and a shelter can accommodate only 7 individuals to survive. After students make their selections, they critically examine their decision-making processes.

Dr. Deborah Sikes describes the Veteran to BSN Pathway initiative designed to help military veterans transition into professional nursing through a BSN program. The program builds on veterans' prior military training, healthcare experience, and leadership skills. She discusses how they evaluated and translated these into academic credit, advanced placement, and targeted support services.

Interruptions can increase risks for errors. The Stay SAFE interruption management strategy aims to mitigate errors. Dr. Ginger Schroers describes her multisite study to determine nursing students' interruption management behaviors before and at multiple assessments after learning Stay SAFE. Four study sites (and 60 students) were included. Data were collected over 10 months via direct observation, self-report, and semi-structured interviews. Prelicensure nursing students independently completed 8 simulated scenarios with embedded interruptions. Interruptions occurred during medication administration and handoff. A majority (93-100%) of the students used Stay SAFE in the posttests. This is an intervention we should be teaching in all of our schools of nursing. The article on Stay SAFE is open access: read and share with your faculty and health system colleagues. You also can read more about the development of Stay SAFE in other articles by Dr. Schroers available at her website.

Students and faculty at a large public university identified a gap in advanced practice nursing education and created a course focused on structural racism and its impact on health outcomes. In this podcast and article, Lisa Mihaly, Linda Stephan, Denisse Porter, Cara McGuinness, and Dr. Alicia Swartz explain the development of the course: Racism, Health Care, and Social Justice. The authors discuss challenges and benefits of teaching this course remotely. Their article includes a table with the course description and objectives and a link to an appendix with weekly content, objectives, readings, and learning activities.

You might be interested in another article by the authors on antiracist education for APNs.

Transitioning to competency-based education in nursing simulation education requires a systematic approach to curriculum assessment. Using the University's Online Simulation System, 2 experts selected American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) behavioral performance indicators that best matched behavioral outcomes associated with simulation student roles in 5 scenarios. In this podcast and article, Dr. Anita Stephen describes the 3-phased approach they used to align cognitive simulation objectives to competencies identified in the AACN behavioral performance indicators. This approach can be used by faculty in other schools.

Dr. Teresa Conklin discusses the shift toward competency-based education and shares strategies that graduate nursing educators can use to provide proficiency-centered experiences for NP students. In her article she describes the role of an Accessibility Committee to apply the Americans with Disabilities Act standards to universal design of digital materials.