Teaching Nursing as a Career

I would love to teach nursing, but the Master Degree requirement and the extremely low pay scale make it less that desirable!!

Originally posted by lsyorke

I would love to teach nursing, but the Master Degree requirement and the extremely low pay scale make it less that desirable!!

You can work in the labs as a BSN. I would think it might get boring quickly though.

I would like to be a clinicals instructor. I s a BSN enough for this?

I just am starting RN-BSN in January. I love teaching literal skills and critical thinking to new nurses and students! I remember how scary being a students was.

I think all nursing schools require a Masters to teach in the classroom or in clinical. Its a shame since there are so many good teachers/nurses who would like to be involved in schools.

Originally posted by sharann

I would like to be a clinicals instructor. I s a BSN enough for this?

I just am starting RN-BSN in January. I love teaching literal skills and critical thinking to new nurses and students! I remember how scary being a students was.

BSN in the skills lab. MSN for clinicals and classroom.

I think that it is a shame that those with the desire & talent but maybe not the MSN degree can't teach nursing. We have a lot to offer to students, especially the experiences & reality of nursing.

What about the LPN program? Does it too require a MSN?

I think it is a greatly misguided reality of nursing academia that teaching nurses to prospective nurses is confined to those with a masters degree. I also believe that it harkens back to poor nursing image, and that nurse academia reinforces our poor image in so doing. I know that my instructors [in the 80s] were all masters trained, most PHD track, and ALL far removed from the bedside.

So who DOES teach prospective lawyers law? and who teaches prospective MDs Medicine? Practicing Lawyers, and practicing MDs, that's who. Without teaching degrees, without credential beyond their license and their clear knowledge based on current practice. And so, lawyers and doctors are taught by those with implied skills based on degree, and known skills based on employment history.

WHY do we not consider our bedside RNs able to teach? Bedside RNs teach ALL the time. We teach patients, family members, and the orientees to our units. We teach the graduate nurses when they seek to work beside us. We teach the nursing students who need exposure to our work. Yet we are not deemed, by our own academia, as relevant to the instruction of our own profession in the pretigious environment of academia.

To go back to one of my first statements, I believe that this is because nurse academia does not esteem us. We are not recognized, with our 5-10 years full time employment in one clinical area as critical thinkers with excellent analytical skills.

No, instead, we must distance ourselves from the bedside in order to lead others to it.

Nursing needs to take the heads up from other, more prestigious professions, who would never dismiss the practitioner as the enlightener.

How bad is the pay for a nursing professor? Several people mentioned the low pay. Do you think the good schedule and lack of stress would make up for it? Just wondering.

You make some very good points pieWACKet. Some of my worst instructors were masters or PhD level AND had not seen a patient in years and years. Lots of myths were reinforced (Don't empty the bladder more than 700cc's with a foley or you'll put the patient into hypovolemic shock)...

I think that a course for how to teach a subject would be more helpful, plus would keep us at the bedside rather than in school tying up our time. I am a strong proponent of furthering education and personally want my Masters at some point, but I don't think I need it (MSN)to teach students how to give meds, bed baths and insert IV's etc...

Post edited :)

"WHY do we not consider our bedside RNs able to teach? Bedside RNs teach ALL the time. "

I couldn't agree more!! Maybe if more beside nurses were teaching, students would come out of school with a more realistic view of nursing which would lower the "quit" rate!!!