Nurse as Educator: Principles of Teaching and Learning for Nursing Practice - Assignment Example

Nurse as Educator: Principles of Teaching and Learning for Nursing Practice This learning experience of attending a committee meeting took place in the dean’s boardroom of the Cincinnati University College of nursing on 6th November at around 2.30pm. I attended the meeting just to observe the dynamics of the meeting. The meeting was attended by all faculty members as it was one of their required roles as nurse educators according to Bastable (2008). I found out that despite everything that took place, the committee members had respect for the authority figure who was the dean. The learning experience I aimed to get from the committee meeting was to identify the dynamics of a faculty meeting and especially the interrelationship between the members of the committee. This was in relation to the competency of a nurse educator of interaction with the faculty according to the National League of Nursing (http://www.nln.org/profdev/corecompetencies.pdf). This committee meeting took place in the boardroom of the college of nursing and was chaired by the dean himself. The meeting was attended by the chairperson’s of the departments and the rest of the teaching faculty in the college of nursing. The meeting began on time as scheduled though even twenty minutes after the meeting had already commenced some of the faculty members were still arriving. A few of those late comers did not even bother with apologies but rather sat down noisily and proceeded with the meeting. The rest were however courteous enough to even provide a brief reason to explain the cause of their lateness which was accompanied by an apology. As expected, once the chairpersons and dean started talking, there was total silence indicating respect of authority but this was just initially. Once the debate started heating up, the meeting became rowdy with a lot of blame game going on and nobody accepting any liability including even the authority figures in the meeting. The lower authority staff were actually hauling words at each other and the meeting moved from the professional side to take a more personal side with people bringing their personal issues in the debate and for a longer than twenty minutes, nothing fruitful was discussed. The chaos however came to almost an abrupt end once the dean (who was quiet all the while observing) raised his voice to command peace (Stachowiak and Bugel, 2013). I also attended a lecture with the aim of identifying the teaching strategies used by the educator during the lesson and also identify the reaction of the students to what is being taught in order to gather whether they were learning anything or not. The class took place in the afternoon and was being lectured by the dean. The first thing on entering the classroom was to form groups of three students each (the class maintained these groups until the end of the lecture). Typed handouts that had discussion questions at the back were provided to each group and then the dean started lecturing on whatever was typed on the handout (Billings and Halstead, 2012). Almost at the end of the class and having completed the handout teaching, the groups started discussing the questions among themselves and then presenting their findings to the class in a debate like manner. The class was quiet the whole time the lecturer was teaching but once the discussion started, rowdiness started creeping in but soon the debate tuned professional and the rowdiness eased. By the time the group work ended, the class had already exceeded their time provided by the teaching timetable by almost an hour. This was not good because if the students had another lecture coming up, it would be delayed extremely. As a result of it delaying, some students going to other businesses started leaving and hence ended up missing the end of the lecture where the lecturer was making clarifications on several issues that had been raised during the group discussions. Journal entry 4 This learning experience took place in one of the lecture halls of the College of Nursing on the same day of the committee meeting but from 9am to noon (although it was supposed to end at 11 am). I wanted to observe the reaction of students during teaching. The main role and competency of a nurse educator is teaching and the success of this role depends on the teaching strategies being used. Billings and Halstead provide a guide on teaching to the nurse educators and I was using this guide during my observation (Billings and Halstead, 2012). The learning experience was still focused on the classroom and the teaching experience. This experience was aimed at identifying and describing the experience based on the reaction of the students and teaching strategies following the lecture by the dean. With the class running over time, most of the students started becoming restless and uneasy and some even left before the class was concluded. With them being uneasy, they could not concentrate on what was being debated about and discussed within their groups and by the lecturer. The teaching strategy used by the lecturer was learner-centered since by the end of the class, it is the students who were in charge of what was taught and critically analyzing it in order to understand more. The group work is also another teaching strategy that seemed to engage students in the class and prevent them “switching off.” By the end of this lecture, I had picked up the strategy of group work when teaching as it portrayed success in the students teaching each other and preventing each other from not concentrating as they would constantly monitor their group members. Discussing what has been taught through questions immediately after the lecture proved to be effective as the students will seek clarification on the issue they have not understood in that class and get answers when still their mind are tuned to the lecture (Bastable, 2008). Even though group work teaching strategy and assessment through discussion questions by the end of the class are effective, I cannot let the class run overtime based on the above mentioned reaction by students. I would ensure that I have a time to time each course of the lecture: the teaching, group work and debate all to fit with the specified lecture duration to also avoid some students losing part of class due to time extension. I would also have the students make the decision about how much time to allocate each activity and ensure that there is someone monitoring the timer and warning if time is almost up (Clarke, 2006). References Bastable, S. B. (2008). Nurse as Educator: Principles of Teaching and Learning for Nursing Practice. Massachusetts: Jones & Bartlett Learning. Billings, D. M. and Halstead, J. A. (2012). Teaching in nursing: A guide for faculty (4th Ed.). St. Louis, MO: Elsevier Saunders. Clarke, A. C. (22nd December, 2006). “Nurse as role models and health educators.” Journal of Advanced Nursing, Vol. 16 (10), pp. 1178-1184 DOI: 10.1111/j.1365- 2648.1991.tb01526.x http://www.nln.org/profdev/corecompetencies.pdf National League for Nursing: Core Competencies of Nurse Educators with Task Statements http://www.nln.org/profdev/corecompetencies.pdf Stachowiak, M. E. and Bugel, M. J. (January, 2013). “The Clinical Nurse Leader and the Case Manager: are both roles needed?” American Journal of Nursing, 113(1): 59-63. Read More