Twenty-first Century Nursing Educators

A LOOK AT THE WORK OF THE NURSE EDUCATOR

 

   © 2015- by University of Wisconsin-Eau Clair 

Globalization is one of the most important driving forces in the new millennium and researchers stress that nursing in the 21^st century has many challenges due to the globalized world ¹. Nursing education provides a greater opportunity to promote global relationships through global networking and global work in inequalities together to achieve the universal health coverage. The role of nursing education offers wider awareness in nursing knowledge and contributes to a nursing profession equipped for today’s challenges and global work with human vulnerabilities and equalities. This poses a challenge for nurse educators to be competent to equip the nursing students of this 21^st century to meet the needs of patients and population health. To overcome such challenges, nurse educators must have an understanding of instructional contexts and design models, learning objectives, and lesson plans.  Today, the question of global leadership, nursing faculty competence and discussions on nurse professionals and nurse faculty retirement has been key issues. If global standards such as nursing classifications (NANDA) is consistent with local nursing practice of nursing diagnoses, then standardization in global nursing arena would influence local practice and the role of nursing educators is vital to fill in the gap between theory to practice ². 

There is growing concern about the quality of educational preparation of nursing faculty. A well-educated, competent nursing workforce, begins with competent nurse educators, is critical to the provision of quality health services and achievement of health equity. Nurse educators must possess the eight domains of learning and teaching integrated with core competencies standards by World health Organization: theories and principles of adult learning; curriculum and implementation; nursing practice; research and evidence; communication, collaboration and partnership; ethical/legal principles and professionalism; monitoring and evaluation; management, leadership and advocacy ³. Each of the eight domains has a core competency and learning-teaching domains (cognitive, affective and psycho-motor).  The competencies reflect a need for clinical competence; sound teaching and assessment skills reflective of an adult learning approach; and organizational and communication skills. The understanding of the nurse educator’s competencies will help to overcome some challenges in nursing education like fragmented, outdated, and static curricula that produce ill-equipped graduates ⁴.

From my experience as pre-registration student, my lecturers were not engage in scholarly writing and publication (competency 4.4) because all of them do not have masters or doctoral degree qualifications ³. I was taught just the surface level about research proposal and it was challenging for me to do my first research at the masters’ level. But from my experiences as a student, I believe I will make a great educator in the near future.

Moving forward, proper support for student learning in the clinical learning environment can occur when the community of learning (learning outcomes, learning activities and learning environment) is properly aligned or matched. Ensuring consistency in curriculum design and lesson plans will deliver the desired teaching-learning expectations in the learning environment. Critical thinking is an important indicator of student learning and is an essential outcome of baccalaureate nursing education. Therefore, it is the role of nurse educators in the development of students’ critical thinking, but nurse educators have to develop their awareness of their own critical thinking ⁵. A nurse educator cannot give skills to others if he or she do not have those skills.  

The role of the nurse educator in the academy is one that is very complex in nature. It involves skills not only to be an effective educationalist, nurse researcher and active scholarly academic disseminating findings and new knowledge to enrich the healthcare arena, but still requires those skills that belong to that of an expert nurse ⁶. However, to inspire excellent clinicians to become educators, the role of the nurse educator needs to be fully defined. Capabilities rather than competencies may better describe advanced professional practice ⁷. Even though doctoral degree is the academic credential required for an academic nurse educator position in a university setting; many PhD individuals lack formal teaching courses in doctoral programs and contradict the belief that these graduates are proficient in teaching ⁸.  The National League of Nursing (NLN) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) supports the future of Nursing to meet the minimal requirements of nurses to have baccalaureate nursing by 2030 ^9,10.  

   

                                          

References

1.        Kraft M, Kästel A, Eriksson H, Hedman A-MR. Global Nursing-a literature review in the field of education and practice. Nurs open [Internet]. 2017 [cited 2019 Jun 30];4(3):122–33. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28694976

2.        Meum T, Ellingsen G, Monteiro E, Wangensteen G, Igesund H. The interplay between global standards and local practice in nursing. Int J Med Inform [Internet]. 2013 Dec [cited 2019 Jun 30];82(12):e364–74. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23688846

3.        Nurse Educator Core Competencies [Internet]. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2016 [cited 2019 Jun 30]. Available from: http://www.who.int

4.        Frenk J, Chen L, Bhutta ZA, Cohen J, Crisp N, Evans T, et al. Health professionals for a new century: transforming education to strengthen health systems in an interdependent world. Lancet [Internet]. 2010 Dec 4 [cited 2019 Jun 30];376(9756):1923–58. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21112623

5.        Raymond C, Profetto-McGrath J, Myrick F, Strean WB. Balancing the seen and unseen: Nurse educator as role model for critical thinking. Nurse Educ Pract [Internet]. 2018 Jul [cited 2019 Jun 30];31:41–7. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29751341

6.        Bono-Neri F. Pedagogical Nursing Practice: Redefining nursing practice for the academic nurse educator. Nurse Educ Pract [Internet]. 2019 May [cited 2019 Jun 30];37:105–8. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31132585

7.        McAllister M, Flynn T. The Capabilities of Nurse Educators (CONE) questionnaire: Development and evaluation. Nurse Educ Today [Internet]. 2016 Apr [cited 2019 Jun 30];39:122–7. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27006043

8.        Bullin C. To what extent has doctoral (PhD) education supported academic nurse educators in their teaching roles: an integrative review. BMC Nurs [Internet]. 2018 Dec 22 [cited 2019 Jun 30];17(1):6. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29483844

9.        Ward U. A vision for the future of nursing. Br J Nurs [Internet]. 2017 Apr 13 [cited 2019 Jun 30];26(7):378–378. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28410040

10.      Strickler J. Florence Nightingale. Nursing (Lond) [Internet]. 2017 Dec [cited 2019 Jun 30];47(12):43–5. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29189459

My Personal Experiences with Technology in Education

Nellie2019

PERSONAL INTRODUCTION

My name is Nellie Semer Yalu and my country of origin is Papua New Guinea which is located in the Western Pacific region, just north of Australia. I am currently a full-time (scholarship) student at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine campus in Trinidad and Tobago. Moreover, I will describe my personal experiences in nursing, technology in education and knowledge of technology.

In 2009, I completed my bachelor in Nursing at the Pacific Adventist University and then practice as registered nurse for two years. My personal experiences with technology in education was developed during undergraduate study in the University especially, with the use of teaching aids like laptop, projector, power-point slides, and speakers. In 2012, I did bachelor of Midwifery and that’s when I developed more computer skills and internet applications. During my career as a clinical Nurse-Midwife, I was working in a teaching hospital and given the chance to supervise medical and nursing students for two years.  I have no experience of teaching in nursing schools.

I would rate my knowledge of technology as 5 out of a scale of 10 because I have been using computers and internet but need to explore more, particularly internet applications like Moodle, blackboard collaboration and so on.  I believe the ‘application of instructional technologies in education’ course will develop my abilities to use and apply knowledge of various technologies for teaching/learning in preparation for my future role as a nurse educator.👌👌😊