Nurse Educator Tips for Teaching

Academic support programs are used in prelicensure nursing education to improve retention, progression, and equity. However, the literature is inconsistent and fragmented. In this podcast and article , Dr. Suzanne Sutton discusses the outcomes of her scoping review on academic support programs. Common interventions were mentoring, tutoring, coaching, and psychosocial support, and schools of nursin...

Nursing students often lack the leadership and communication skills needed to serve as innovative change agents in health care. Undergraduate curricula rarely emphasize these skills. Dr. Andrew Richards discusses how integrating pitches, the 4th P, into nursing education broadens dissemination and strengthens communication, advocacy, and innovation across undergraduate and graduate programs. Read...

Community-based service-learning projects provide an effective framework for developing leadership skills. Senior nursing students designed and implemented a project in which they assembled and distributed disaster-preparedness kits and provided in-person educational sessions at multiple community sites. Students managed budgeting, purchased supplies, communicated with partner organizations, and c...

Real-time instructor feedback is a key component in nursing education, yet the phrasing of feedback prompts is rarely discussed. At the end of each class throughout the semester, the author asks nursing students: What is one area of opportunity for my teaching today? The phrase "area of opportunity" is intentional and tends to change how students respond. Dr. Valerie Wright discusses the power of...

Learning and professional growth are embedded throughout the undergraduate curriculum. Beginning with the first-semester professional practice course, students are introduced to the professional nurse role through key concepts such as practice excellence, collaboration, and innovation. Early in the course, faculty observed students struggling to understand the nurse's professional role and the imp...

Understanding how the brain learns has the potential to strengthen student engagement and learning. One practical framework for operationalizing neuro-based learning is the 4A learning sequence (Anchor, Add, Apply, Away). This simple neuro-friendly teaching sequence is well-suited to nursing education because it can mirror the cognitive processes that support clinical reasoning. The authors explai...

Critical thinking has long been valued in nursing education and is a foundational element of clinical judgment. Discernment is often viewed as a particular type of critical thinking that involves making distinctions, including distinguishing fact from truth. In this podcast, the author (Miriam Abbott) describes discernment activities ("accuracy assignments") that she integrated into 3 online nursi...

Drs. Kim Leighton and Suzan Kardong-Edgren describe their new study that evaluated the reliability characteristics of CLECS 2.0 using secondary data analysis of 591 prelicensure nursing students. This study led to CLECS 3.0. This instrument can be used to compare how well prelicensure nursing students believe their learning needs are met in 3 clinical learning environments: traditional clinical le...

Rural areas face a persistent shortage of BSN-prepared nurses, impacting health care access and equity. In this podcast (and  article ), Dr. Kim Hudson-Gallogly discusses the barriers to rural clinical placements for undergraduate nursing students and introduces a faculty-led Rural Immersion Capstone Model (RICM) as a sustainable solution. The model can be used as a prototype for undergraduate and...

Nursing programs teach many psychomotor skills that are not practiced enough for students to achieve mastery, leading to skill decay. Teaching fewer psychomotor skills could improve skill performance, yet there is no consensus about which skills are most essential. In this podcast and article , Dr. Mike Aldridge discusses the psychomotor skills most essential for new graduate nurses in medical-sur...

Expert clinicians who enter academia are often unprepared to function in the role of nursing faculty due to a lack of academic preparation for teaching roles. This gap in readiness can lead to challenges in delivering effective instruction, mentoring students, and meeting academic expectations. Drs. Abby Suarez and Rebecca Lane describe their orientation program for novice nurse educators and how...

As nursing education continues to transform, nursing schools are seeking intentional strategies to ensure clinical experiences are meaningful and support students' development of clinical reasoning and judgment. Traditional post-clinical assignments, such as care plans and concept maps, have served as tools to evaluate undergraduate learners' understanding of patient care.  This podcast with Dr. K...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a rapidly growing concept in today's world, and healthcare is no exception. Nurses who lack the ability to engage with AI risk exacerbating biases and causing patient harm. This podcast with Drs. Kate Bayan and Asma Taha and their  article describe how an innovative strategy using generative AI can be used as both the subject and the tool for transformative learning...

Pre-rounding, reviewing patient data from the electronic medical record to formulate preliminary management plans, is an essential professional behavior for nurse practitioner students. To develop this clinical skill and promote metacognition, students design a personalized data collection template in a clinical seminar, identifying which data elements they will review and how they will organize t...

Harm reduction approaches are well-established public health interventions that can reduce mortality associated with substance use. Concepts related to harm reduction and overdose prevention have been virtually absent in the nursing education literature. This study by Dr. Brayden Kameg and colleagues evaluated changes in nursing students' perceptions toward people who use drugs and knowledge, beli...

Extensive clinical hours and prior health care experience are widely believed to enhance new graduate nurse practice readiness, yet supporting evidence is limited. Dr. Ryan shares an important study that examined these assumptions. Using data from 189 students from 8 BSN programs, Dr. Ryan and colleagues found no significant associations between practice readiness and total clinical hours, between...

Effective nurse-physician communication is essential for patient safety and care coordination. Communication failures are a leading contributor to sentinel events, highlighting the need for interprofessional communication training in healthcare education. Yet many nursing and medical students have limited opportunities to practice structured, real-time communication with future colleagues. This po...

Advanced practice nursing programs face a critical shortage of preceptors to guide the translation of education to clinical practice. Preceptors face barriers to mentoring students, including inadequate training and orientation, and a lack of benefits and time.   This podcast with Dr. Kala Christopherson and article present the results of a study for improving the education, retention,   professio...

Nurse educators are critical in advancing evidence-based practice (EBP) in academic and clinical settings. However, limited research exists on how doctoral education influences their EBP beliefs and implementation behaviors. Dr. Tara O'Brien discusses their study that evaluated changes in EBP beliefs and implementation among Doctor of Nursing Education students over time. She emphasizes the import...

Enhancing graduate students' scholarly writing skills remains a consistent challenge in nursing education. While generative artificial intelligence (AI) offers promising support, faculty often wonder how to guide students in using these tools effectively and ethically. One successful strategy used in an entry-level graduate nursing course involved creating a customized GPT-based virtual writing tu...

Nurse educators seek teaching methods and modalities that effectively prepare nursing students for practice in the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains of learning. One tool is virtual reality simulation. Virtual reality simulation is an interactive, immersive technology that replicates real-world clinical scenarios for users.   In this podcast, faculty discuss the results of a research s...

New graduate nurses often lack the skills necessary to care for clients at the end of life. Essential to designing an end-of-life course is awareness of the potential psychological impact of the content and providing students with appropriate support resources. An online, asynchronous end-of-life course was integrated into an undergraduate nursing curriculum. Weekly modules provided specific welln...

Intensifying demands on nurses have led to burnout and workforce instability. Dr. Stubin describes her study that examined nursing alumni perceptions of how effectively their undergraduate curriculum prepared them to manage workplace burnout. She conducted focus group sessions with 55 alumni, all of whom had less than 5 years of experience as registered nurses. Participant responses included feeli...

Inclusive education benefits all students, including neurodivergent and disabled learners, and reduces reliance on individually awarded accommodations. Dr. Megan Arbour provides a practical framework for embedding inclusive practices into nursing education. This framework    integrates Transparency in Learning and Teaching, Universal Design for Learning, and Competency-Based Education. With this a...

Death and dying within the broader scope of end-of-life care causes anxiety in most students. Escape rooms in an online learning environment enable engagement among participants in a safe environment. Students assess and implement nursing measures to provide comfort to patients and families at the end of life. This podcast with Drs. Rebecca Clark and Jodi Fry (and their article ) showcases how stu...