Am I qualified to teach nursing??!!

[oreo64]

I have been an RN for 20 years....I have worked Home health, Hospice, Health Department and for the past 11 years have been teaching a certified nursing aide class. My classroom is at a community college and I am getting the bug to go back for my BSN then Masters with intent of teaching nursing. But, I feel my clinical skills are extremely rusty. I like teaching so well, that if I did not go back to teach nursing, I have seriously considered just simply going into education.

Why not just stay where I am ? just getting a little stagnant.......

Then I worry that if I would go back and invest all that money, maybe I would be terrible at teaching nursing. What is the job outlook there?

Or should I just be content, continue on???

ANy ideas???

[TheCommuter, BSN, RN]

What's your current educational level? If you're an RN with a diploma or associate's degree, you may want to start out by teaching LPN, CNA, and MA classes to see if teaching might be something you'd enjoy without investing the time and money required to return to school.

Your diploma or associate degree and years of clinical experience certainly qualify you to teach the future LPN, CNAs, and MAs of the world. Good luck to you!

[llg, PhD, RN]

I gather from your OP that you are already teaching a CNA class. So, you know you love teaching. The question is: "Are your nursing clinical skills sufficiently current to teach a higher level of student.?"

My thoughts on that are "No, not at the moment. Not unless you have have also been doing some work at least part time functioning in the nursing role with patients." If you were a nursing student, would you want an instructor who hadn't done patient care in 20 years? A lot of things have changed since then and you should update your knowledge and skills before you start to teach the next generation of nurses.

However ... if you HAVE been working at least part time in a direct care role recently, then get the education you need and go for it.

Perhaps you could start working part time in a direct care capacity while you go to school. Another possibility is that you might be able to find a job teaching basic funamental skills in a skills lab setting or in an LPN program's introductory course -- where you knowledge of the basic skills related to the performance of hygiene, patient transport, activities of daily living, etc. would be emphasized rather than the coordination of complex care in an acute care setting.

Good luck to you!

[HouTx, BSN, MSN, EdD]

Oreo64,

Welcome to my world! Nurse educator here - we certainly need 'new blood' to energize our rapidly dwindling supply of nursing faculty.

In nursing, we actually have 2 basic types of educators - academic & 'service' or workplace. Which area are you interested in? We workplace educators generally have much higher incomes than our (frequently much more qualified) academic colleagues but our hours can really suck because we have to meet the needs of a 24X7 industry. Workplace educators are normally involved in clinical practice on a regular basis, so there is no problem maintaining your skills.

Either way, if you want to go for education - aim for at least an MSN. Entry-level workplace education positions are available for BSNs, but there's usually no advancement. And . . . what does it say about an educator if she/he doesn't demonstrate belief in the 'product' by obtaining more education?

Modern educators must also have a wide range of 'education' competencies that can only be gained through formal education in the 'discipline' of education (e.g, instructional design, educ. psychology, eLearning development, performance management, etc). So that's why you really need a graduate degree - this content really isn't covered in a BSN.

Good Luck - Keep us posted on your progress.