Do I want to be a nurse educator??

[juliamcc]

:yeah:Hello allnurses! I love this website...

I am at a major career junction. I think I want to go into education, but just don't know where to start. I have been out of the workforce in nursing since start of 2009--have been taking care of my elderly parents. I graduated in 2003 with MSN in psych and ran my own practice as a psych NP for 5 yrs. Then my career was suddenly put on hold to care for my parents.

How in the world do I get started with embarking in this new direction? I have got to return to the workforce. I cannot find employment in my hometown -- very small area -- am either "over-qualified" with MSN or "under-qualified" as I don't have recent direct patient care experience, as well as the fact that my most recent work/specialty was psychiatry. In 2006 I did teach a psych clinical for BSN students...it was great, except for the fact that I had to be on the job at 7am again!! Don't like those early morning hours...never did. I only taught one semester--it was part-time while I was running my practice. I do not wish to teach at that particular school again. I have ZERO desire to work as a staff RN on a psych unit--been there, done that, but would do it as clinical educator.

I do not want to teach med-surg! I will teach psych and would love to teach policy, advocacy, anything politically oriented in the nursing field. How do I market myself for an educator position to teach those areas?? Politics in nursing is my real passion and I would love to share that with students and other faculty.

So, do I have to bite the bullet and take anything I can get just to get my foot in the door as faculty/educator? Do I need additional coursework? I just don't know where to start. Don't know what to put on my cv for "objective"...

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Have a great weekend!

[HouTx, BSN, MSN, EdD]

Welcome back!

I'm a 'seasoned' (sounds so much better than old, right?) service-based nurse educator & I can't imagine doing anything else. We're in the forefront of everything and healthcare is in a state of rapid transition on many fronts, so it keeps us hopping. Our expertise & creativity is highly valued in the planning & implementation of any type of organizational change.

Today's workplace educators are much more than teachers. Workplace education is on a continuum, from first-line Preceptors to unit based or service line instructors to Educators who are responsible for systems to develop and maintain competencies that support an organization's strategy. At the higher levels, clinical expertise is not as important. Instead, skills such as instructional design and project management are very important. I spend a lot of time consulting & analyzing performance issues on a macro level and designing interventions, including educational programs and curricula, to address them. I also manage online education systems and design and develop eLearning programs so I have to stay current in technological advances.

There's also a third venue (besides academia and service) for nurse educators today. Most healthcare-related product & service companies (equipment, IT systems, pharmaceuticals, etc) employ educators to create programs to educate end users as well as their sales reps. Those are great jobs also, but usually involve a bit of travel.

In order to make the transition, you will need formal educational preparation in the discipline of education ( in adult education, education theory, ed psych, instructional design, education law, program evaluation, etc). I would recommend taking them in a general education program because I found that the education courses offered in nursing grad school to be overly focused on nursing rather than education. You may be able to pick these up at any school that provides teacher education.

Best of luck to you! Keep us posted on your progress.

[VickyRN, MSN, DNP, RN]

Since Psych Nursing is such a specialized area, you may not be able to find nurse faculty openings at your local community college or university-based nursing program to teach or hold clinicals in just that area.

In applying for any open nurse academic faculty positions, your flexibility, versatility, and ability to be assigned to multiple clinical site locations (even the dreaded med-surg) or teach a broad variety of nursing subjects will be a cogent consideration.

Best wishes to you :)

[elkpark]

Ditto what VickyRN said. In my experience as an MSN-prepared psych instructor, you pretty much have to expect to also teach other topics in order to have a full-time job, usually things like Fundamentals and Med-Surg. ADN programs typically do not have coursework in the topics you identify as your other primary interests ("policy, advocacy, anything politically oriented in the nursing field"), and, while BSN programs generally have courses in those topics, in my experience, those are taught by senior, tenured faculty who get "first dibs" on the courses they enjoy teaching. As a new MSN-level faculty member, you would have to work a long time and pay a lot of "dues" to get to the point of getting to pick and choose what you teach.

The reality is that the more selective you are about what you are and aren't willing to teach, the less attractive a candidate you will be for teaching positions. I'm not saying I think that's a good thing, but it's the way it is (and yet another of the many reasons why I'll probably never take another teaching job ...)