Can a hospice nurse be a nurse instructor?

[HospiceCareRN]

I am currently a hospice nurse at a busy inpatient hospice facility. I was recently accepted into a masters program for nursing education. My question is, if I want to be a nurse educator (probably start in the clincal setting and then possibly in more of a classroom setting), would it be better if I moved back to working in a different field of nursing. I am worried that working in hospice will limit what I can teach. I do work with very complex patients with multiple medical issues; we administer IV abx, narcotics, blood etc as well as wound care, ostomy care etc. But I am not CPR or ACLS certified as it is not a requirment at our hospice. Would I be a better teacher if I worked in an inpatient hospital setting where I would be constantly learning/practicing more up to date clinical skills? I just love hospice nursing and am hesistent to look into other fields but I would do it if it could help a potential career in education.

Thanks so much for any responses!

[abiklags]

one of my favorite clinical instructors worked on the hospice/pain&palliative floor in the hospital. she was my instructor for 2 semesters (fundamentals and Med-Surge 1) and i learned alot from her.

[llg, PhD, RN]

Are you performing physical care in an in-patient environment? Or are you coodinating home care and doing some skills there? There is an important distinction there.

If you want to teach undergraduate med/surg clinicals, then most of the better schools would prefer that you have recent experience in an inpatient setting. However, they might be happy with someone with home care experience to teach a community health clinical rotation.

While each school is different, most schools have clinical rotations that fall into the same general caterories. Which category of clinical rotation do you want to teach? In the "fundamentals" clinicals or "med/sug" clinicals, each instructor usually supervises 8-10 students at a time in a long term care facility or acute care hospital unit. Does your current job give you expertise in either of those types of care? If not, then a good quality school would hesitate to hire you for such a job. If it does, then there is no problem staying in your current job.

Would community health be a better fit? Those clinicals are very different.

[HospiceCareRN]

@ abiklags....thanks so much...very encouraging!

@ llg - I am providing physical care in an in-patient environment; we work with what seems like standard med/surg issues: PEGs, PCA pups, IV fluids, narcotics, wound care etc etc. I think I would probably want to teach a fundementals clinical. I am just wondering if it would be (or look) better if I switched to a hospital Oncology unit...that way I could still provide care to terminally ill patients which is my passion but might have more up to date skills (plus I would then get my ACLS and CPR certification).

[ToughingItOut]

I truly don't know much about the subject, but you could still get your ACLS and CPR on the side. :)