Nurse Educator Tips for Teaching

Nurse educators interact with multiple generations of learners and colleagues. Each generation is unique, which can create divides. In this podcast and article, Dr. Jennifer Chicca shares strategies educators can use to bridge these generational divides.

Despite playing an important role in patient care and advocacy, nurses are consistently underrepresented and quoted in health care media coverage. To address this, Dr. Rachel Malloy developed a media training program for doctoral students based on the 10 published media competencies for nurses. In this podcast and article, she explains why media training for nurses is important, describes the training program, and reports on the outcomes of the program.

In this podcast and article, Drs. Susan Seibert and Stephanie Rexing describe an innovative teaching strategy with nursing and occupational therapy (OT) students. The students were paired in interdisciplinary dyads – one OT student and one nursing student. The nursing students taught and demonstrated key clinical skills (the accurate measurement of blood pressure, radial pulse, respiratory rate, and pulse oximetry) to the OT students. In turn, the OT students provided instruction on assessing range of motion and gross motor strength. Drs. Seibert and Rexing emphasize the need for students to learn about interprofessional practice when they start their nursing and OT programs.

Traditional methods used to teach health assessment skills and diagnostic reasoning in an advanced health assessment and differential diagnosis course limit skill acquisition and personalized feedback. Integrating small-group learning, online simulations, and reflective practice may improve competency outcomes. Drs. Rashmi P. Momin and Kala Christopherson describe a multimodal intervention – the Small-group Learning, Mega Skills Lab, Online Escape Rooms, and Reflection (SMOR) Toolkit – that they developed to enhance students' competencies in health assessment, diagnostic reasoning, and clinical documentation. They share the toolkit and other resources in their article.

Resilience supports nursing students as they transition into professional practice, yet limited evidence describes how resilience evolves over time. Dr. Randall and colleagues explored facilitators and barriers to resilience in nursing students as they transition from school to clinical practice (described in their article). In this podcast, Dr. Randall discusses new graduate nurse resilience and the use of photovoice and virtual focus groups to collect these data.

Dr. Tonya Anthony developed an intervention for beginning nursing students to develop their emotional intelligence (EI). She describes this intervention, which included a presentation by two experts in EI, role play, video clips, and other active learning strategies. Dr. Anthony explains how she integrated the intervention in the course and reviews the outcomes with listeners.

If you are looking for a new approach for team teaching, this podcast is for you! Often, teaching teams distribute the course content and then function independently to teach and grade their assigned content. Drs. Cori Heier and Kristin Ashley describe their new model for team teaching. Two faculty members are responsible for the lecture component of the class, and a third faculty member creates and facilitates in-class activities (every 15 minutes) for the content.

Many nursing programs have high rates of students who fail or do not complete their program for other reasons. Retention is a problem when nurses are critically needed. This podcast with Drs. Hanwook Yoo, Xuechun Zhou, and Beth Phillips presents the results of a research study that showcases the importance of assessing academic readiness prior to admission to a nursing program. This article is OPEN ACCESS so read and share widely.

Nursing education focuses on the development and demonstration of clinical judgment, which includes creating plans of care that meet the needs of the intended patient, family, or population. Innovation is a logical next step in nursing practice, filling the gaps left by a lack of evidence or products. During a curricular redesign, a new required course on health care innovations was added to the undergraduate curriculum. This podcast with Dr. Sarah Llewellyn and Edward Zepeda presents a teaching strategy that helps students prepare for advanced or expanded roles in practice to address real-world problems. Be sure to read their article.

Dr. Lori McElroy begins this podcast by describing the effects of trauma on nursing students' academic progression and well being and explains why using a trauma-informed approach (TIA) in nursing education is important. Along with Dr. McElroy, Dr. Stacy King and Dr. Valerie Eschiti discuss some practical strategies faculty can use to create a trauma-informed learning environment for students. They also share the outcomes of their scoping review on literature related to a TIA in nursing education.