In nursing education Role Transition As A Nurse Educator and Developing Competence in healthcare education for new students.
Developing Competence and Role Transition As A Nurse Educator
The transition from clinical nursing to nursing education requires the development of specific skills and adaptation to the new role. This includes preparation for teaching, mentoring, leadership development, and continuous learning. Key areas include pedagogical skills, knowledge of curriculum development, and the ability to create a positive learning environment.
Developing Competence in Nurse Educators
Competence as a nurse educator cannot be achieved without practical experience. Literature on developing competence and, ultimately, expertise (Chi, Glaser, & Farr, 1988; Ericsson, 1996; Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Romer, 1993) indicates that reflective practice and a variety of experiences promote the development of expertise. A variety of experiences means working with more than one preceptor, in more than one setting to broaden one’s perspective on nursing education. Settings include clinical, laboratory, and class.
Students in graduate programs should participate in opportunities in which they work with several preceptors over the course of the program of study. Student educators can maximize their learning opportunities by being open to the lessons offered by each individual helping to shape their future practice. Expectation of success and multiple experiences are two key concepts that will enhance the development of competence as a nursing educator.
Transition from Clinician to Educator
How does one transition from being a good nursing clinician to being a competent nurse educator? Qualities that draw one into nursing are also essential to nursing education. The term nursing, which comes from the Latin term nutricus, means to nourish. Just as nurses nourish, support, and care for their patients, nurse educators nourish, support, and care for their students.
Educators serve as role models of caring in our interactions with both students and patients. Caring can be role modeled and shared by setting up partnerships for the purpose of promoting nursing education. Partnering with peers and faculty on this journey transitioning from clinician to educator can lay the foundation for success.
What Clinicians Bring to the Educator’s Table
Considering the knowledge that a clinician has within the three domains of learning will help novice educators appreciate the skills clinicians bring to the profession. According to Bloom, Hastings, and Madeus (1971), the three domains of learning include: cognitive-knowledge, affective-feelings or attitude, and psychomotor-physical skills. Learning in the cognitive domain occurs when there is a change in knowledge and intellectual skill development.
The intellectual skill development encompasses Bloom’s taxonomy of increasing levels of intellectual skill including: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Learning in the affective domain occurs when there is a change in attitude or feelings; the recipient receives the phenomena, responds to the phenomena, values, organizes, and internalizes values, thus changing attitude.
Learning in the psychomotor domain includes stages from perception of sensory cues of activity to be learned, through origination, in which the learner is able to create new patterns in response to different situations for the activity. Previous learning related to nursing practice in these three domains will facilitate the transition from practitioner to educator in the following ways.
Clinicians have a solid knowledge base and a variety of experiences that give them a broader picture of a concept than that described in a nursing text. The novice educator brings this clinical knowledge to the educational setting. Telling narrative accounts of experiences is a particularly helpful teaching strategy (Lovin, 1992; Mattingly, 1991; Sparks-Langer & Colton, 1991).
Narratives provide a forum for learning in both the cognitive and affective domains as the narrator describes an experience, dilemma, feelings, values, and attitudes. The description of the patient, assessment findings, and pathophysiology provide the cognitive learning whereas articulation of feelings and/or attitudes experienced by the nurse provides for learning in the affective domain.
Equally important, educators can use their narratives to develop case studies or problem-based learning assignments to promote active learning for their students. Furthermore, physicians’ experience performing actual nursing skills is essential for teaching the foundations of nursing practice. Most nurses have learned a few helpful strategies not found in the nursing literature. It is only through hands-on practice that one truly learns the psychomotor skills necessary in nursing.
Simple tricks like stretching a transparent occlusive dressing to break the adhesive fibers to ease removal of the dressing can only be learned by doing. In other words, reading the performance steps in a procedure manual or text involves the ability to perceive the information, but the actual mechanism of the action and complex overt response, also known as skillful performance, does not occur until one has carried out the procedure enough times for the skill to be achieved.
Although clinical experience will help facilitate the transition from clinician to educator, experience alone does not ensure learning (Brehmer, 1980; Sheckley & Keeton, 1997). A critical analysis of one’s experience is essential before passing one’s tips along to students. Critical analysis includes reflecting on one’s experience and noting where and when the lived experience matches the theoretical, research findings. Nurse educators must be aware of the need to teach evidence-based practice.
Learn to ask questions such as, Why does this work? Is this more effective than what’s currently in print? If so, why is it more effective? Recognizing and using clinical talents in the educational setting is accomplished best in a supportive environment. Setting up partnerships, whether they are peer partners, preceptor student partners, or teacher-student partnerships, can facilitate role transition from clinician to nurse educator.
Cognitive Apprenticeship and Partnerships Ease Transition from Novice to Expert, Clinician to Educator
In academia, we have been socialized under a hierarchical structure using the work of cognitive developmental theorists like Perry (1981) and King and Kitchener (1994) who describe a linear or categorical model of development as individual’s progress from one level of thinking to the next. The concept of connected relationships is linked to Riane Eisler’s (1987) work on partnerships, in which she first described the “partnership way.”
In her work, she envisioned a society where mutual respect and trust, a low degree of fear and social violence, and an equal evaluation of men and women are the norm. “The partnership way” offers a power-with rather than a power-over relationship between teachers and students, among peers and colleagues. Kathleen Heinrich and others (Heinrich et al., 2005) described how nursing education can be transformed through partnerships. A “How can I help you? How can you help me?”
Way of thinking can benefit both partners while promoting scholarship for both students and faculty. Rather than going it alone, graduate nursing students should develop partnerships with peers and teachers as they seek to advance in their nursing career. Sharing one’s gifts and talents with others provides an opportunity for both individuals to grow.
Several nursing educators (Heinrich & Scherr, 1994; Jacobi, 1991; Krawczyk, 1978; Paterson, 1998) have recognized the power of partnerships and peer-mentoring activities not just as a strategy for learning but also as a way to invigorate the profession and “promote reciprocal learning” (Eisen, 2001, p. 30) between professionals.
Setting Up a Partnership/Apprenticeship
So how does one go about setting up a partnership and a cognitive apprenticeship? Critical aspects of setting up a successful partnership/apprenticeship include trust and mutual respect. Learners must trust that their role model (preceptor) is proficient in skill and in ability to impart knowledge. Expert educators/preceptors must trust that their apprentice is willing to work with them and learn from them while providing a safe environment.
A safe environment will be provided by the preceptor who does not expect the student educator to supervise or evaluate nursing students in an unfamiliar setting or situation. For example, a student educator should not be expected to be solely responsible for providing feedback to nursing students who have been known to be defensive when given constructive criticism. Mutual respect is essential in that both the partnership preceptor/role model and student educator should respect that each has gifts and talents that they bring to the partnership.
Learning is not a one-way street. Instructors can always learn from students whether they be nursing students or student educators. Setting up a contract in advance where preceptor roles and student roles are well defined will help to ensure that both parties are cognizant of the expectations and will foster a climate of trust . A mechanism should be in place for renegotiating terms of the contract as changes in learner needs and preceptor abilities arise.
It is essential that both apprentice and expert have mutual goals for the experience and a willingness to work together to achieve those goals. Setting the stage with a “How can I help you? How can you help me?” Expectation will provide an opportunity for both preceptor and apprentice to gain from the experience. For example, one graduate student worked with a diabetic nurse clinician who was responsible for educating and evaluating pregnant women with diabetes.
This student designed her learning experience in such a way that she not only learned from her preceptor but also shared her knowledge with the preceptor, and gave something back to the affiliating facility. The student, experienced in literacy and patient education, redesigned a patient diabetic education pamphlet to be more visually appealing and linguistically easier for all patients to read.
In this way, both preceptor and student benefit from the experience. If at all possible, apprentices should select their mentor/preceptor. If a student educator is assigned to a preceptor that she does not know, there exists the potential for a lack of congruence on goals/expectations or interaction style.
Role Transition As A Nurse Educator and Developing Competence
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