Desired Characteristics of Effective Nurse Educators - “My Ideal Nursing Instructor”

Thank you Vicky for the clear and comprehensive breakdown of characteristics/competencies desired in an ideal nursing instructor. Adult education contains many crucial underlying aspects which influence motivation, learning and asimilation. The profile of nurses today covers a vast range from new grad to mature, experienced individuals-some desirous of a career change to the profession.
Alongside the necessary competencies in education, the reality of breakdown and classification of competencies or what the student brings to the classroom and working environment would be an topic of research relevant to today's health care system. The need for psychological support for ongoing self esteem and awareness, for all learners is vital to build and maintain confidence in self assessment, a form of *experiential learning* (Kolb) where single loop learning leads to double loop or triple loop learning as knowledge is reinforced in practice. I think that this is a vital aspect in nursing education as real gaps can exist between stimulation and application of knowledge, especially where support has been removed. As the profession of Nursing and as nurses, we inadvertently sabotage learning through overwork and the imposed requirement to wear two caps, that of the worker and the self motivated learner often with severely bruised egos and diminished self esteem in the workplace. Today, our challenge is to find a new approach to the profession by first breaking down our own self assessments and behaviours in order to own our profession and maintain a level of excellence in professional service without being willing victims.

Nursing is learning to recognize the normals vs the abnormals; then planning your care to met the patient's needs. As an instructor that has taught all levels of nursing, I have to say that too many students think they can learn best with scenerios and don't bother to memorize the normal values. Nursing is great fun and very rewarding but it is not all "codes" and "abnormals"; sometimes it is just caring and being there. Watching and waiting. Doing tasks.... Yes, I give lots of examples and tell lots of stories when I teach and never get a bad evaluation from the students--- but the message needs to go out that all students gets what they want out of classes. I see the first semester instructors getting beat up by evaluations all the time because the newest students have a hard time believing that not all people are ment to be a nurse... It takes a very special heart to care that much.