Transitioning from Clinician to Clinical Educator

de la Cruz, Karen H.

Monday, 31 October 2011: 10:20 AM

Karen H. de la Cruz, MSN, AACNP, FNP
College of Nursing, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT

Learning Objective 1: The learner will be able to identify factors contributing to the nurse educator shortage.

Learning Objective 2: The learner will list skills specific to the nurse educator role that differ from the clinician role.

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.

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