What did you do before you started teaching?

Great question, Andrea :) Well, let's see.... a little bit of everything, it seems. Started out in general med-surg, also was the small community hospital's mother-baby (L & D) RN, helped staff the emergency room at night... Then, worked in cardiac stepdown and cardiac ICU. Now, I teach anything and everything in my ADN program (except Psych, that is).

A little bit of m/s, a little bit o' home care, but mostly peds (including onc/bmt/picu, peds ltc, and some peds ED). Right now, my clinical is m/s and my lectures (thus far) have been peds. I only started lecturing this semester, so I don't know what I'll be asked to teach in the fall yet. I'm hoping down the line I can teach peds clinicals (I will feel much more in my element there). I was asked if I could swing Ob next sem. I can't say no (if I want a job :chuckle)... I have floated to newborn and post-partum, but don't really have expertise in that field.

In cases where you are not experienced, my advice is to network, network, network. If I do the Ob clinical (it wouldn't be a full semester, only 6 days out of the m/s clinical), I will be spending a lot of time in that forum here :chuckle. I also have some friends who work in Ob, and I'll be doing a lot of reading up on the subject. If you teach in an ADN program, it is expected that you teach more than one specialty, esp. if your main specialty is a not m/s. In my area, these specialties (peds, Ob, psych) do not get a full semester devoted to them, so the teachers end up teaching something else as well.

So far my colleagues have been very supportive. For my first lecture, my coordinator gave me the outline, overheads and questions she used when she taught my content. I tweaked it a bit, made a powerpoint, followed the text the students used, and voila (well, not quite that easy). It was actually fun to re-learn the content (peds oncology- something I really don't have experience in). I ndefinitely would have been more comfortable teaching a more familiar content, but I managed, and next year (God willing) I'll do it even better.