Abstract

The shortage of educators has had a great impact on the ability of the current educational system to oversee the number of students interested in the profession of nursing. The AACN reports that approximately fifty thousand qualified applicants were denied entrance into nursing schools for the 2008-2009 school year for this reason. To alleviate the educator shortage, hiring practicing RNs as clinical educators has become common. These nurses are often unprepared to navigate the labyrinth of the academic milieu. Faculty with a solid grounding in clinical practice and academic experience developed and implemented a program to transition hospital based nurses into the clinical educator role. The program highlighted the different skill sets required by the expert educator and clinician. A reference handbook was created and presented, covering a wide range of issues faced by the instructor in practice settings. The study was a quantitative, experimental study utilizing a pre-survey, immersion experience and post-test taken by program attendees, a convenient sample. The pre-survey and post-survey were evaluated using a Likert scale. Collected data indicated that job satisfaction, retention and confidence in the clinical educator role were improved after this immersion experience.

Description

41st Biennial Convention - 29 October-2 November 2011. Theme: People and Knowledge: Connecting for Global Health. Held at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center.

Author Details

Karen H. de la Cruz, MSN, AACNP, FNP

Sigma Membership

Unknown

Type

Presentation

Format Type

Text-based Document

Study Design/Type

N/A

Research Approach

N/A

Keywords:

Clinical Education, Clinicians

Conference Name

41st Biennial Convention

Conference Host

Sigma Theta Tau International

Conference Location

Grapevine, Texas, USA

Conference Year

2011

Rights Holder

All rights reserved by the author(s) and/or publisher(s) listed in this item record unless relinquished in whole or part by a rights notation or a Creative Commons License present in this item record.

All permission requests should be directed accordingly and not to the Sigma Repository.

All submitting authors or publishers have affirmed that when using material in their work where they do not own copyright, they have obtained permission of the copyright holder prior to submission and the rights holder has been acknowledged as necessary.

Acquisition

Proxy-submission

Share

COinS
 

Transitioning from clinician to clinical educator

Grapevine, Texas, USA

The shortage of educators has had a great impact on the ability of the current educational system to oversee the number of students interested in the profession of nursing. The AACN reports that approximately fifty thousand qualified applicants were denied entrance into nursing schools for the 2008-2009 school year for this reason. To alleviate the educator shortage, hiring practicing RNs as clinical educators has become common. These nurses are often unprepared to navigate the labyrinth of the academic milieu. Faculty with a solid grounding in clinical practice and academic experience developed and implemented a program to transition hospital based nurses into the clinical educator role. The program highlighted the different skill sets required by the expert educator and clinician. A reference handbook was created and presented, covering a wide range of issues faced by the instructor in practice settings. The study was a quantitative, experimental study utilizing a pre-survey, immersion experience and post-test taken by program attendees, a convenient sample. The pre-survey and post-survey were evaluated using a Likert scale. Collected data indicated that job satisfaction, retention and confidence in the clinical educator role were improved after this immersion experience.