Nursing Classroom Education: The big bang of powerpoint slavery

[guest042302019]

I have recently graduated and having a fair amount of time on my hands (jobless, thousands of applications filled out and resumes polished) I wouldn't mind giving an open, honest opinion of educators and the practices.

There was a point in my college career that I loved soaking up knowledge. I would read extra books and take more time on many subjects. I loved to learn. Particularly, I enjoyed spending time with Anatomy, Physiology, and other human sciences.

I finally get accepted to the nursing program. Suweeeet. I worked so very hard and now I'm in. I start to settle in the first semester with all the rules, regulations, unique tests, clinical, and other stuff. As I go through the first semester, I notice a chilling pattern in my instructors. I had 3 instructors teach the Nursing Fundamentals class. While each one was slightly unique in tone, and delivery, they all were teaching verbatim from the book (I'll come back to this). I have to say we were given the occasional patient story. "I remember this one time or this one patient really..." the instructors said. Most stories were interesting and insightful at the time. In our program, we were given hand-outs. Lectures consisted of power point 99.9% of the time. Most teachers had the hand-outs posted on our college website prior to the next lecture. Some didn't. No big deal.

So there I am, lecture after lecture, having this annoying monkey on my back. I kept thinking, "This is incredibly boring. I'm being read to. Everyday, I listen to a college professor point and read from a powerpoint. Oh god, I'm literally losing my mind." Where's the real world connection? Where's the excitement? This goes on and on. I finally decided to write a letter to the faculty. I'm the type of guy that is pretty open with my opinions. I try to be professional with the delivery in this case. I write a story about how I enjoyed my education at one point. The information was exciting and neat to the listen to. A sociology professor once told my class that, "I went through my master's having been read to. I don't want the same for you." She didn't. The class was engaging.

The overall point I'm trying to make is that I absolutely despise the powerpoint when used improperly. It was used improperly the entire program. It extremely difficult to stay remotely engaged to a lecture when I could stair at my desk and read it from the handouts or I could stay home, skip lecture, and teach myself. Nursing is a very hands-on profession as of you all know. This is no hands-on approach. The current nursing education approach seems to be like, "How much information can we shove down the student's throat in the shortest amount of time and bore the h*ll out of the them?" Truly, the nursing education is exraordinarily boring. Now, this is coming from a person who LOVES school. I don't find it to be a chore or an annoyance. If I feel this way, how do you think the people feel who despise or don't like school feel?

I write the letter to the faculty. There were some meager changes but as a whole, nothing. I get a big dose of nursing med-surg non-sense in the intracerebral route daily. Guess how much is retained and is actually useable. Minimal. I'm not trying to slander nurse educators. Believe me please. I'm trying to wake you all up. Of course, this may not apply to most of you. But, look at your current method of teaching. Do you rely heavily on the powerpoint like I describe. If so, there is likely some folks in your class that feel the way I do but aren't willing to fess up about it. Do you see people texting? Doodling? Not paying attention? I think each subject can be approached with enough pizazz and interest to, the bare minimum, keep people looking at you, engaged, and awake.

What happened to your love for teaching? After all, isn't that love the reason why you entered education. I hope so and not because you want to fall back on your masters or higher education. It is apparent to students if you have done so. There is no excitement, no creativity, no pizazz, or no uniqueness. We can see at the bottom of the powerpoints that are provided by the big publishers such as, "Mcgraw-Hill or Evolve." I see the convenience of using those. But, being an educator and having a "body of knowledge", I would assume one could muster up, at least, personally created powerpoints or lectures.

I don't know when THE BIG BANG OF POWERPOINT SLAVERY occurred but it's highly overrated. If powerpoints were Jesus, nurse educators seem to be the apostles following. Well, I'm Judas and narking on Jesus. Just showing point here (not trying to be sacrilegious or offensive). Tap your creativity again, brush off the dust, and attempt to keep your students excited. How often do you get students rushing in your office door saying, "Wow. Your fluids/electrolytes lecture was fascinating. Or, I've never heard it explained like that. Now I understand. Or, do you have extra books on this subject because I'd like to read more on that." Wouldn't that be awesome?! Try new and interesting methods. There is research out there saying that the current method of classroom learning and teaching is ineffective as it is. Lecturing for endless hours is on the bottom of the totem pole of effectiveness. Ineffective Airway NANDA says? Well, "Ineffective Teaching", Andrew says.

For instance, so I don't seem to talk the talk. I sat here for a couple of minutes thinking of an interesting way to keep people engaged.

How about this:

You are lecturing about CHF.

Try starting the class with a patient report you would give to a co-worker. For instance, about a basic CHF patient. Give assessment data, medical orders, daily tests and labs, etc. A real clinical situation.

Then lecture about this condition for 30 minutes and then quickly discuss the patient report after having talked about the cardiac theory.

You'd be connecting theory with a clinical setting. Practice having students hear patient reports. Exposure to medical orders. And, using the nursing process. Enhance collaboration amount students to develop a quick care plan and plan nursing management. Many Benefits.

Or....You could read S/S of CHF...pathophysiology...nursing assessments...interventions...outcomes...THEN move to next disease...S/S of cardiomyopathy....etc...etc...etc...ZZZzzz.

Just a thought. I don't though. I'm not a teacher. Overall, the point is to quit reading to us verbatim what we can read ourselves. Lecture isn't a party but it isn't a funeral. Keep us engaged. Please don't rely on powerpoint like it's the bible. Use other strategies. Please.

Again, I don't want to offend educators. I'm hoping to shake some out of their routine a bit. Try some new things. I'm not mad or resentful because I'm graduated (How could I be).

Here's an honest, broke, and jobless ex-student that has too much time on his hands, spends too much time on AN, and just wants to help out. Take care.

[Rose_Queen, BSN, MSN, RN]

Get used to it, when you are a nurse you will get 3 hours of annual ed on computer via powerpoint and short quiz, then if you are really lucky, you get to go to in house education, where people with MSN and Phd will read a power point to you. I have my BSN, I know there are other forms of education out there, not sure why nursing professionals with advanced degrees are so lazy.

Or is it that nursing educators, including those in staff education, are stretched far too thin? I am responsible for over 500 people- completion of orientation (average number of people on orientation at a time is 15-20 scattered over 3 separate hospitals in 15 different departments), annual and quarterly competency validation (which has to be done 1 on 1), being a resource for other departments that use our ORs and need to know what can and can't be done/how to work within the OR environment, maintaining all the paperwork that goes along with orientation and competency, providing staff education monthly, lining up education from outside vendors, maintaining and updating all of the policies for the department, working with student surgical technologists and student nurses and medical students on how to not contaminate sterile fields/how to scrub/how to prep/how to walk around, and so much more.

It's not laziness to utilize PowerPoint as a tool- it's a decent way that hits the most staff and can be done in the limited/non-existent time that I as an educator have to work with.

Want to change it? Advocate for your staff educators to get the supplies and time that they need. I need at least another full time educator, some updated training supplies for staff to practice with (I'm pretty sure several of our supplies are older than I am). But don't dare think that PowerPoints are used just because educators are lazy. I'd say your username is quite appropriate there.

[jennycRN]

As a student, I hate 'death by PowerPoint' as much as the next person. I also desire to be challenged and engaged in the classroom. But now on the flip side as an adjunct instructor I also understand more of how the nursing education world works. Reality is that students learn differently, many haven't read or understood the material prior to lecture. In addition we have to ensure consistent presentation of standardized material across multiple sections of a course. Also, developing your "own" material takes considerable prep time, often over multiple semesters, and is made more difficult when instructors are bounced from course to course.

So, yes, I love teaching, and like most instructors I would like students to find my class to be worthwhile and interesting. Maybe one day you will become the entertaining instructor you wish that you had. But you will also understand the multiple challenges and pressures involved in educating nursing students.

[dudette10, MSN, RN]

I am a new instructor, and there are a number of issues. The first is the amount of content that schools expect us to teach. It's ridiculous. So many of my colleagues agree. I'm now on our curriculum committee with these same colleagues, and we are committed to making a change.

I usually teach a class where I can control the content, unlike most of the classes in our current curriculum. I love it. I have finally gotten my class to the point where students realize they MUST do the reading beforehand to participate fully in the classroom and actually learn something. I haven't completely flipped the classroom, but it is definitely a mixed classroom (the term for the lecture/active learning activity combo). I feel good about it, they are engaged, and they have shown me, through formative "quizzes," that they are learning too.

The content creep MUST be addressed for every classroom to be an active one. That takes a lot of hard work via curriculum development and talking the frightened instructors who don't know how to create an active learning classroom off the ledge.