Expanding Self-Efficacy of Nursing Faculty With Improved Orientation

The NLN (2015) reports that the complex healthcare system is being stressed by a nation-wide workforce shortage and this is being exacerbated by nursing schools rejecting the qualified candidates due to an inadequate number of faculty to educate the entrants. The constraints of limited and qualified nursing faculty is astounding and the effects are nationwide. Crocetti (2014) discusses that on frequent occasions, the newly hired adjunct faculty are inexperienced in their new role as an educator and deficiencies are noted in preparing the instructors on how to educate nursing students for the complex healthcare system they will encounter upon graduation. Research reveals that in order to retain the clinicians, and increase a successful transition to academia, guidance is needed by supporting the new educators through improved orientation and mentoring programs (Cranford, 2013; Danna et al., 2010; Grassley & Lambe, 2015). The problem identified for the research study was that new faculty members were lacking an appropriate orientation to transition into the faculty role and many were choosing to leave education due to the feeling of not understanding their teaching role. A local nursing school updated and improved their nursing faculty orientation to better meet the needs of the current instructors. The current research is a retrospective analysis of data from the enhanced orientation to compare teaching self-efficacy before and after completing the orientation. The research question was the following: Will there be a difference in adjunct faculty’s teaching self-efficacy after receiving an online orientation as measured by pre- and post-test? The research of this pilot study revealed statistical significant in an increase of teaching self-efficacy scores following completion of the orientation course at the local university, Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test z = -2.52, p < 0.05, with a large effect size (r = -0.63). The study findings supports acclimating nursing faculty to their role as educator will increase teaching self-efficacy. If the faculty are cultured to their role, they may choose to stay in education which may assist to combat the nationwide nursing and nurse faculty shortages.