Roles of Nurse Educators in Diverse Environments

Roles of Nurse Educators in Diverse Environments

Introduction

The presence of skilled nurses is vital to functional healthcare systems, and it is the role of nurse educators to act as the driving force to train this experienced workforce. Nurse educators are registered nurses who combine their acquired academic and clinical expertise to train nursing students (Yordy, 2016). These professionals determine the standards and educational curriculum while preparing students to achieve a successful transition into practice. Additionally, they are involved in empowering the newly registered nurses to thrive in their professions besides improving systems that uphold nursing education. As a nurse educator, one can teach in technical schools, universities, or hospital-based programs taking a role as an independent contractor, consultant, or administrator. Hire our assignment writing services in case your assignment is devastating you.

C1. Roles and Responsibilities.

As Bednash (2019) argues, from a global perspective, the role of nurse educators is to form communities that are responsible for ensuring that a generational nursing workforce exists and has attitudes, skills, and up-to-date and accurate information that are needed to provide effective patient care. As a result, several occupational pathways exist for the nursing educator, and their role on a day-to-day basis is dependent on the particular educational process in which they are involved. Some nursing educators spend their time preparing non-licensed learners on how to transition to the workforce besides implementing high-level degree programs required by licensed RNs who seek advanced skills. Within such circumstances, the responsibilities of the nurse educator will be mostly academic and involve routine tasks such as improvements on or building the curriculum, advising and teaching students, conducting academic research, or examining educational outcomes. Nonetheless, most nurse educators take on hybrid roles that combine teaching and nursing practice. This may be within the hospital, university, or any other healthcare setting. A nurse educator in such a hybrid role continues to offer patient care while also teaching nursing students or less experienced nurses undertaking fieldwork. The day-to-day roles in such a case would be those of an academic nurse educator combined with streamlining processes, coordinating clinical placements, mentoring, and coordinating of continued education.

While the common roles, as previously discussed, would entail teaching at hospitals and universities, these roles expand beyond these areas. ANEs also coach nurses, assist with planning life care, consult in forensic and legal capacities, teach patients how they can navigate insurance landscapes, and may also be involved in policy improvements in government efforts to polish health institutions.

Put differently, nurse educators uphold and improve the structure and systems upon which nursing education and practice rests. They continually create new and innovative means of approaching nursing within the different levels listed above to promote safe and quality patient care.

C2. Functioning within the parent institution.

As a nurse educator, one can teach in technical schools, universities, or hospital-based programs of nurses taking roles as independent contractors, consultants, or administrators. Following the fact that nurse educators are very experienced nurses who have passed, earned, and acquired knowledge and skills, a number of specializations to teach exist that match their different specializations as nurse practitioners. Currently, with over 100 different specializations available for any registered nurse, an equal number of these specializations exist for the nursing educator (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2019). A few known specialty areas of the undergraduate with budget positions include Critical Care, Community and Public Health, Pediatrics, Maternal Health, Psychiatric and Maternal Health, Adult Health, etc.

As part of their functioning, on top of these specializations, the university-affiliated nurse educators may choose what level of education they are willing to provide. Relating to their educational level, the nurse educator may deal with enrolled students in vocational or practical nursing, associates, diplomas, bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral degrees. Also, on top of the academic specializations, the entrepreneurial nurses may take to different functions and career trajectories with the parent institutions. They can provide their extensive experience in non-traditional setups that can leverage the institution’s resources to accumulate and benefit from them as administrators, policymakers, and in-house contractors. In that case, the ANE functions within the parent institution by;

Understanding knowledge of history, current trends, and issues in higher education to make decisions and recommendations on educational issues

Ability to identify the social, economic, political, and institutional forces influencing the higher education in general and nursing education in particular

As a nurse educator, one develops networks, collaborations, and partnerships that enhance nursing influence within the academic.

The educator determines their professional goals within the academic nursing and mission of the parent institution and nursing.

Integrates the values of respect, collegiality, professionalism, and caring to build an organizational climate that fosters the development of students and teachers

Incorporates the goals of the nursing program and the mission of the parent institution when proposing change and managing issues

C3. External Stakeholders

For an ANE, the external stakeholders are those who operate outside organizational borders in healthcare and institutional settings but are relevant to their operations. Vital external stakeholders include;

One of the nurse’s professional associations. These bodies define the roles of nurses and educators, making them more profound than other stakeholders. On the same, as suggested by (the Institute of Medicine, 2016), coordinating professional bureaucracies like hospitals takes place in many ways outside such institutions through professional associations. For example, this may happen when the nursing associations publish a recommendation for the nurse’s behavior – just like the Finnish Nurse’s Association did on ethical guidelines instructions (Institute of Medicine, 2014). These professional controls are also instituted much more strongly than management controls in schools and hospitals. Being part of such bodies would mandate that the members are able and willing to accept the laid down values of a particular professional group. In practice, professional values are the ethical principles that are central to nursing as a profession and are, therefore, internalized or taught as early as when training the nurses at the phase of indoctrination (Cronenwett, 2018). Ordinarily, these shared ethical codes function as a tool to maintain the professional body’s external and internal legitimacy. As an example, the legislators would set expectations based on these professional bodies on nurses about their competence and knowledge requirements, something that will express a nurse as a skilled and expert developer. And because an ANE is also an RN, he/she falls in the same category.

Two are the nursing employers. Those who employ nurses care about the quality of nursing programs at the college level. Home health programs, doctors’ offices, and hospitals keep relying on the ability of well-trained nurses to deliver quality patient care. For example, medical practices hold very close working relationships with nursing educators and their programs to help them obtain students to serve on the clinical sites. For an ANE, as part of a nursing program studies at any level, they are mandated to link students with medical practice undertakings and hands-on experience. The ANE cares about nursing employers because these are the people who will recruit potential employees by partnering with area colleges.

C3A. Communication Strategies

As Dunnington & Folse (2017) state, an effective communication strategy is one that is stable and consistent. It should have the capability of handling all the different messages without alteration or confusion to the recipients. The system should also have much flexibility built into it so as to allow changing messaging conditions that can occur and must be dealt with. For external communication, the external strategies ought to cover the mass attention of the public and not only focus on conveying the intended value but also be used to connect with these external parties. Such strategies may include;

First, website content and blogging. Content marketing, SEO, and website creation are some of the best ways to reach external stakeholders. This is because this is an effective means of building the bottom line. After all, in this present day, whenever anyone wishes to consider something as an established brand, they first google it to see the web presence. Another reason why blogging can be effectively used for communication is because it has good ROI. Weisman (2018) explains that companies that blog are likely to generate 67% more leads compared to their peers. As an effective communication strategy, the website is the hub through which to achieve brand-building campaigns. Success stories can be placed on indexed pages of the website, making it more likely that any interested stakeholder will obtain whatever they are looking for.

Secondly, it is through conferences and live events. In any effort to explore the external and internal communication of one’s institution with external stakeholders, there is a need to reach a greater appeal that covers a broad audience. Despite the fact that blogs may capture more attention, there is a need to interact with professional partners, shareholders, and potential partners at a personal level. Seminars, live events, and conferences are one of the greatest ways of boosting external corporate communication. This is because face-to-face interactions are effective when there is a need to create lucrative relationships – a concern with external stakeholder communication.

C4. Interprofessional Collaboration

There are several ways through which the ANE can facilitate collaborative efforts in interprofessional development. Importantly, as nurses, they have spent large proportions of their time in delivering patient care and, therefore, possess very valuable abilities and insights in contributing to the improvement of safety and quality of patient care. Also, ANEs are educated in comprehensive assessment of family and patient needs and data collection of quality indicators and can readily assume leadership roles. From this, they are better positioned to coordinate all aspects of teaching and patient-centered care. Several studies (Horns & Baker, 2017;  Cronenwett, 2018; Bednash, 2019) confirm that there is a need to improve collaboration and communication between healthcare and other disciplines. The ANEs possess the necessary skills to facilitate the development of interprofessional collaboration, as explained below;

To start with, they develop leadership programs for nurses, from both education and practice, to co-create positive organizational cultures that promote interprofessional collaboration. ANE offers a deep, broad experience and knowledge that go beyond the general needs of the healthcare system and particularly patients. They interact with nurse colleagues, physicians, researchers, administrators, technologists, accrediting representatives, regulators, and all those who have an impact on the outcome of the community besides the patients. In addition to making such interactions within healthcare systems, they also make contributions to implementation, development, and ongoing process improvements and products, for example, telenursing (like the e-ICUs) and EHRs. They also connect with influential leaders and expand their colleague networks (in the learning institutions, facilities, and national arena), which empowers others and boosts their individual scope of influence. One author (Brand, 2018) gave a description of the importance of ANE collaboration to develop an EHR. The ANEs and their clinical colleagues will work together with vendors, information technologists, and statisticians in order to create health records that promote accurate documentation while contributing significantly to efficiency and greater ease of retrieving records.

ANEs are able to form resilient, collaborative interprofessional teams, which help the members in embracing protocols and policies that are patient-centered and team-based. This is because they are excellent coordinators of their intellectual ability to interact with diverse populations of technologists, administrators, physicians, family members, patients, etc. Thus, they are able to communicate with individuals coming from different professional backgrounds who have different responsibilities and goals but are particularly valuable to the complex educational or healthcare environment.

Secondly, Interprofessional collaborative efforts can also be facilitated by ANEs at multiple levels when they lead improved processes and outcomes. Whether these are professional organizational representatives coming from nursing committees (e.g., ANA), medical associations such as AMA, or the specific academic partnerships among different schools or policymakers, they all incorporate and feature the contributions of an ANE. These formed relationships are helpful in educational institutions’ boards of trustees, advisory boards, and/or governmental committees in which they play significant roles in successfully and effectively redesigning healthcare, revising payer systems, and reducing barriers preventing learners from working at optimal levels of their education.

Third, ANEs encourage diversity to facilitate interprofessional collaborative efforts. According to the latest report by the Institute of Medicine (2016) and Institute of Medicine (2017), it has been noted that there is a great diversity within the healthcare setting, for example, researchers, administrators, educators, and clinicians. This is important because it is a reflection of a growing racial, religious, cultural, and community diversity. This changing population demographics mandates revisions and reassessment of the patient care protocols to help meet individual or family needs of care that can only be motivated by a collaboration of the different professionals in the facilities. An ANE has the knowledge across boards that link communication between these professionals by giving a diversity of ideas and illustrating how the caregivers can be so engaging in offering lifelong learning on the evolving needs of patient care. An ANE is also able to maintain professional growth and competence, and by the virtue that they have diverse exposure to populations of diverse backgrounds, they lead initiatives that improve patient care in terms of procedures and policies by collaborating with other fields.

 

Lastly, ANEs try to ensure that learners get prepared for the diversity found in healthcare. They acquaint the learners with each new standard relating to the practice of professional nursing and competencies that would reflect the dynamism of the nursing profession and practice. For example, the newly added standard of cultural congruence practice has been added to Nursing: Standards of Practice and Scope. This standard delineates the RN’s role in cultural diversity and includes interprofessional principles with the practice of competency. Such standards advocated by the ANEs offer critical solutions to social changes as the numbers of ethnically and culturally diverse consumers increase. They set the societal, legal, and educational accountability for registered nurses (RNs). These changes, which result from revisions of standards, enhance the RN’s scope of practice while increasing opportunities formed from interprofessional collaborations through team leadership of ANEs in disciplines relating to policy, provision of care, self-assessment, and education.

D1. Challenge Summary

One economic challenge faced by ANEs is financial shortages and budget constraints. The new millennial generation is one of the largest in recent years. More young people than ever are now considering careers in nursing. So why is there seemingly an acute shortage of academic educators to mentor and teach this fledgling ‘nurses-to-be?’ Budget constraints have contributed to a shortage of faculty at nursing schools across the country. Some are calling this a crisis, as it is affecting nursing schools’ enrollment capacities.

Faculty shortages at nursing schools are limiting the number of new nursing students at a time when the need for nurses continues to grow. Although a limited number of educational grants and scholarships are available, most individuals seeking nursing education must finance their own education at any level of preparation. Costs vary based on the pathway selected for basic preparation and through to doctoral preparation. The LPN degree is the least expensive to attain, followed by the ADN, BSN (accelerated program), BSN, master of science in nursing (MSN), and PhD/doctor of nursing practice (DNP) degrees. It is no surprise that educational costs and living expenses play a major role in determining which degree is pursued and the number of nurses who seek advanced degrees.

To better understand the costs of nursing education, a study by Bednash (2019) estimates the various costs associated with pursuing nursing education, specifically at the advanced practice level, in comparison with those for a medical doctor (MD) or doctor of osteopathy (DO). The study produced several comparison charts in an attempt to convey accurately the differences in costs between alternative nursing degrees and the MD or DO degree. This task required making assumptions about public versus private and proprietary/for-profit education options, prerequisites for entry, and years required to complete each degree. An area of particular difficulty arose in assessing costs associated with obtaining an ADN degree. In most non–non-healthcare disciplines, the associate’s degree takes two years to complete. In nursing, however, a survey (Bednash, 2019) has found that it takes students 3 to 4 years to complete an ADN program because of the need to fulfill prerequisites necessary to prepare students for entry into degree programs and the lack of adequate faculty, which lead to long waiting lists for many programs and classes.

D1. Impact of Challenge

The limited availability of national funding poses a significant external challenge to successful ANE roles as nursing educators. Increasing the capacity of educational institutions to educate nurses requires additional funding. The current prioritization for medical education and residency training through federal support makes increasing funding for nursing education difficult. Furthermore, current research funding priorities by the National Institute of Nursing Research do not support the investigation of nursing education issues, nor do they support research about the implementation of innovative practice education models at the graduate level. In many research organizations, nursing faculty pursuing academic careers and tenure are discouraged from pursuing clinical education research as a funded line of inquiry. Among potential ANE preceptors, there may be a lack of willingness to precept students due to a lack of incentives beyond the ideals of serving the profession. Most educational institutions are unable to compensate preceptors financially for their teaching roles and are limited in the nonfinancial benefits they may provide preceptors, such as faculty titles and access to educational resources. Potential preceptors may see the challenges to practitioner productivity or the additional time commitments of being a preceptor as disincentives to assuming the role. The lack of formal preparation and support for the teaching role may further discourage ANE from being a preceptor. While direct or graduate entry training is increasingly used as a mechanism for increasing the supply of graduates, potential preceptors may be resistant to training students with little or no healthcare experience.

D2. Scholarly Sources

Several scholarly sources (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2019; Institute of Medicine, 2016; Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2018) attest to the lack of financial aid to promote nursing scholarship.

In one study by the Institute of Medicine (2016), it is noted that the imminent retirement of the current generation of nurses is one of the major reasons for a projected decline in the nursing workforce. But, even when the current nurses keep retiring at older ages, the shortage for RNs will still persist as the number of new RNs has reduced, and those in service are at risk of changing occupations due to stressful work situations. On the other hand, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (2019) notes that more than 45% of working RNs will be aged above 50 by 2020 and are nearing retirement. In the researchers’ argument (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2019; Institute of Medicine, 2016), they hold that if entry to nursing maintains the current rate, nurses’ demand is going to outstrip supply by close to 500,000 RNs before 2025. In their recommendation, just like with the report by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (2018), if the RN demand is expected to grow by 3% to 4% every year, one way of solving the nursing shortage is offering scholarships to more and more passionate, capable candidates for the nursing program. These studies have demonstrated that if the increased demand for nursing staff persists, then it will result in adverse patient outcomes. To sum it up, consumer advocacy groups, healthcare administrators, Federal and state legislators, and nursing school leaders should work together to fund nursing candidates, which will ensure that the delivery of healthcare is not compromised.

D3. Opportunities and Barriers

One of the approaches that can be used to address this issue is the employer needs to provide clinical facilities to the educational institutions in which the school can teach the nursing staff how to be members of a clinical faculty. Such an academic partnership and practice will be helpful in gaining competency in nursing education and will bridge the gap between professional practice and education preparation in a more cost-effective manner. An example of such an institution is in Florida, where the community college has partnered with the hospitals around its vicinity. The setup has greatly reduced the cost of practicing nursing at the community college (Horns & Baker, 2017). The school has been represented within different hospitals, and conversely, different hospitals have been represented in the community college. The employers have, therefore, underwritten the cost for faculty to run evening and weekend programs. Currently, about 530 students participate at reduced costs (Horns & Baker 2017).

The collaborations between academic nursing institutions, clinical agencies, and hospitals will also solve other critical problems that face clinicians and educators in another way. The partnerships address the complexity of healthcare issues like nurse shortage and the needs of nurse educators by building on assets and values that strive towards mutually identified goals and shared accountability. The partnerships share space, resources, and research presence, which reduce overall cost. Successful collaborations that have existed among institutions include the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which greatly reduced the cost of training nurses and increased number of program enrollment.

E1. Teaching, Scholarship, and service.

Registered nurses (RNs) who complete the educational requirements to become academic nurse educators must be prepared to take on the challenges of the classroom. This entails adapting the clinical experience and advanced education into academic instruction. This will involve the nurse educator serving as a teacher, scholar, and collaborator. The three roles are aligned with the following:

As teachers, nurse educators are expected to use the appropriate theoretical frameworks to help student nurses develop skills that can be used in wide-ranging care. The competencies are learned through education and experience.

As scholars, nurse educators are responsible for the Scholarship of teaching, discovery, application, and integration. Nurse educators are expected to design, collaborate, and use research in the

As collaborators, nurse educators work with peers, students, administrators, and communities. They are expected to use their problem-solving and decision-making skills to interact with diverse

To promote this, I am expected to:

Apply critical thinking when making effective decisions and solving problems creatively with students, colleagues, administrators, and members of the interdisciplinary team

Formulate learning objectives, learning strategies, and activities in relationship to theories of teaching/learning.

Evaluate therapeutic nursing intervention of students to facilitate role development in the delivery of health care.

Collaborate and communicate effectively with students, colleagues, and

Integrate the role of Scholarship, teaching, and service that foster improvement and innovation in health care and nursing education.

Analyze economic, political, ethical, legal, and regulatory standards that influence nursing and nursing education with a focus on the needs of rural, diverse, vulnerable, and aging populations.

Provide evidence-based teaching and practice the use of information.

Demonstrate curriculum development, implementation, and

Demonstrate Master’s level practice.

Nurse educators must receive “structured preparation” for the role, including a vast array of information about teaching, learning, and evaluating. One should be prepared to develop a curriculum, assess program outcomes, and contribute to the academic community.

Developing a Five-Year Plan

The five-year plan will encompass actions, objectives, and goals with specific dates that will help plan for the transition. The goals remain achievable and realistic, and the objectives are very measurable. Also included are the steps to attain the objective and accomplish these individual goals. Some of the milestone goals include earning an advanced degree, obtaining a position as an adjunct in a university, and then applying for a position as a full-time faculty.

This plan is to be evaluated on a recurring basis, and revisions may be made according to the current needs. Besides, this plan is not set in stone and may be revised if need be. Once this plan is complete, a new plan will be generated for continuing the journey as an ANE. The author believes that the transition will be challenging, but numerous strategies may be employed to guide through this process. Becoming a clinician and an educator is a journey filled with tremendous learning and growth.

E2. Ethics, Values, and Cultural Norms

Ethics education has offered critical foundations to address ethical questions that arose during the delivery of patient care. As a prospective ANE, the following ideas will be used to promote compliance with values, ethics, and cultural norms in the future.

To start with, it offers ethics education in research, academic, and clinical settings. This may also include collaborating with accrediting bodies to help in implementing the development of ethical content as part of the academic milieus.

Secondly, is by joining the working groups of bioethicists or nurse leaders who are advancing research on effective pedagogical strategies and areas that are of key content, which subsequently lead to the development of best guideline practices for ethical nursing education.

Also, to promote such values, piloting innovative curricula models for both the graduate and undergraduate levels on ethical nursing education may link the didactic goals to some measurable outcomes. In addition, it is to track the students’ cohort that has been trained in innovative, ethical programs to provide longitudinal data to be used for future transition practice.

Similarly, investing in the new generation of ethical nursing at the faculty level strengthens ethical nursing scholarship, constructing innovative curricula, and promoting students’ stewardship when transitioning to nursing practice. To adhere to and promote such values will be through offering academic-professional partnerships in the settings of clinical practice.

Lastly, adhering to these values and norms will also constitute identifying opportunities to partner with professional organizations and ethics content experts, which are key stakeholders, thus increasing accessibility to standard content of ethics education. For a start, during the transition into academia, online access to some of this content can be an invaluable resource, especially with limited onsite resources. In addition, to incorporate cultural values and norms, the ANEs should avoid unintentionally stereotyping the new community into a specific cultural or ethnic group based on characteristics like outward appearance, race, country of origin or stated religious preference. Stereotyping refers to an oversimplified conception, opinion, or belief about some aspect of an individual or group of people. Secondly, nurse educators should be careful about labeling new colleagues or students. For instance, citizens in the United States may refer to themselves as Americans, but that term can also apply to individuals from Central and South America.

E3. Academic Environment Type

An academic environment to facilitate the ANE transition is best suited to a learner-centered environment as opposed to an educator-centered environment. An educator-centered environment is one that focuses on one way of knowledge transmission. However, in fact, the nursing curriculum is content-heavy. As Yordy (2016) explains, the learner-centered approach in transition would imply not adding but deleting unnecessary content. It is carefully paying attention to the beliefs, attitudes, knowledge, and skills that learners bring with them in classrooms. In that case, it is culturally relevant, appropriate, and compatible, given the diversity of nursing education. For a transitioning educator with a learner-centered environment, it is possible to use one’s knowledge and the curriculum context to address real-life problems. As the best academic environment, a learner-centered approach implies that as an educator, one will focus on the needs of the learners and the willingness to achieve them so as to be effective. It will mandate the utilization of previously acquired assessment strategies in the clinical setting and classroom. Consequently, the educator will find an appropriate balance that forms between activities designed to promote individual learners’ understanding and those that are designed to promote the necessary skills to function effectively within the clinical area. Also, in such an environment, feedback occurs continuously from other nurse educators, fellow peers, and oneself but may not be so intrusive as part of the given instructions.

Reference

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (2018). Residency program for first-year nurses eases entry into the profession, producing well-above-average retention rates. Retrieved from: http://www.innovations.ahrq.gov/content.aspx?id=1842 (Accessed July 3, 2019)

American Association of Colleges of Nursing. (2019,). AACN position statement: Indicators of quality in research-focused doctoral programs in nursing. Retrieved from: http://www.aacn.nche.edu/publications (Accessed July 3, 2019)

Bednash, G. (2019). New careers in nursing: Scholarships for new nursing students to address the nursing shortage and increase diversity. Retrieved from: http://www.rwjf.org/pr/product.jsp?id=29071&catid=18 (Accessed May 21, 2018)

Brand, M. (2018). Addressing healthcare workforce issues for the future; Statement for the record to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. Retrieved from http://www.hhs.gov/asl/testify/2008/02/t20080213b.html (Accessed September 25, 2018)

Cronenwett, L. (2018). Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN). Presented at the 118th meeting of the National Advisory Council on Nurse Education and Practice, Rockville, MD.

Dunnington, G., & Folse, J. R. (2017). Teaching and learning in medical and surgical education: Lessons learned for the 21st century. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Horns, P., & Baker, S. (2017). Leading through collaboration: A regional academic/service partnership that works. Nursing Outlook, 55(2), 74-78.

Institute of Medicine. (2016). Health professions education: A bridge to quality. Washington, D.C: The National Academies Press.

Weisman, C. (2018). Overview of nursing practice models. Retrieved from: http://www.nursinglink.com/training/articles/967-overview-of-nursing-practice-models (Accessed October 15, 2018)

Yordy, K. D. (2016). The nursing faculty shortage: A crisis for health care. Princeton, NJ: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

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