A Letter to My Future Students

My Dearest Student:..

I hope that you understand I want nothing more than to offer you the knowledge that I have obtained over the years as a nurse.  Know that it is normal for this journey to feel lonely, long, and bumpy.  It is my goal to provide you with the required skills that pave a path to a smooth, professional career that you find completely rewarding.  I hope to be the hand you reach for when the work becomes difficult and overwhelming. I hope the be the call you make when you are seemingly lost in research and books and need direction and inspiration; and I hope to remain your mentor long after you have finished my course and graduated from the nursing program.  Please know that you are never alone, as your instructor I have been in your shoes and I remember a time when veteran nurses and instructors ate their young (meaning, they chewed us up and spit us out).  This is not what I want for you dear student; it is my deepest wish to use the time that you are my student to make you professional, knowledgeable, independent and efficient; thus, breaking the traditional maltreatment cycle of new hire nurses.

One of the ways I intend to provide you with a career that is second to none, is by creating an engaging, active classroom, laboratory and clinical environment.  Traditional teaching was all that I knew prior to taking an informatics course in 2017.  I hope to share the skills and knowledge that were provided to me in this course with each one of you.  21^st Century nursing education instills quite a challenge with regard to technology; however, I have been provided a significant tool box and list of resources that will provide each of you with an advanced, technologically savvy learning environment that will both challenge and drive all of your nursing education endeavors.  For instance, be prepared to provide your journals in a professional blog, present infographics, eposters and educational commercial grade video strips to your classmates.  Having the confidence to begin to use technology for the first time, or just to learn different aspects of technology, is the first step in understanding the importance of health information management and nursing informatics and the role it plays in the future of patient care.

         I hope that you are as amazed and excited as I was when I was learning to use these creative, innovate types of learning strategies during my educational endeavors.  I also hope the information that I provide to you will be a big stepping stone into the technological advances you are about to witness in healthcare as a whole throughout your career; including electronic medical records, medical equipment, medication administration and so much more!

I wish you the smoothest of journeys, remember that I am here for you, remember that I am on your side and that I am your biggest advocate as we all strive for success stories in the nursing program!

All My Best,

        Ms. B.

Informatics and Technology in Nursing Education

             As I have identified throughout my blog, the world of nursing and nursing education has significantly changed over the last 100 years; although my professional nursing career has only spanned the last 25, I have personally and most specifically witnessed substantial transformation in the use of informatics and technology. 

The Nursing Informatics Competency Self-Assessment is highly recommended in providing a better understanding of personal comprehension of informatics in health care.  Provided by the Nursing Informatics Learning Center,  the assessment identified that I am confident in utilizing personal computer skills to enhance and inspire creativity, as well as perform routine nursing functions within my profession.  The assessment also identified my personal recognition of the importance of using technological information within my chosen profession, as well as the fact that I have a positive perception of the importance of computerized healthcare and nursing applications.  My personal growth in technology and informatics has taken place most recognizably within the last four years of higher nursing education.  Classes such as Informatics and Statistics have offered me the opportunity to visualize the bigger picture and utilize modern technology to comprehend the information at a much more superior level.

Continued education and personal experience has brought me to a place within my career in which I wish to use the skills provided over the years to encourage, engage and prepare a new generation of nurses to flourish in their own careers.  Some of the most modern 21^st century technological teaching and learning strategies that I look most forward to utilizing include clickers in the classroom, Digital Story Telling, MoveNote (my personal favorite), High Fidelity Simulation, and blogging.  These new and innovative advances in technology provide a level of education far beyond traditional nursing education and offer the student the opportunity to obtain, absorb, comprehend, maintain and reflect upon knowledge received throughout and beyond their status as a student.  I also maintain the responsibility to ensure my personal knowledge, teaching qualifications and abilities continue to grow with the rapidly evolving technologies in health care, as offering students a 21^st century learning environment that encompasses modern and up-to-date clinical and technological practices and processes is pertinent to ensuring quality health care across the United States.

Feeding Forward Traditional and Authentic Assessment

          The 21^st century nursing classroom both significantly differs, yet remains quintessentially similar to the late-20^th century nursing classroom with regard to utilization of traditional and authentic assessment.  In 2016, Jon Mueller created the Authentic Assessment Tool Box; however, non-inclusive and without regard to how it might be utilized within nursing education. One of the most interesting pieces of information within “The Tool Box” is the comparison made between traditional and authentic assessment (TABLE ONE), as it is written to the ideals non-utilization of active teaching strategies within a non-technical course curriculum.  

(TABLE ONE)

           Upon review of the defining attributes of each assessment style above, it is quite obvious that if the table is slightly altered, we can effectively recognize the assessment styles currently utilized within theory and simulation/clinical nursing curriculums today (TABLE 2).

Nursing Curriculum Assessment
Theory Assessment Traditional	Clinical Assessment Authentic
·         Selecting a Response ·         Contrived ·         Recall/Recognition ·         Teacher-Structured ·         Indirect Evidence	·         Performing a Task ·         Real-Life ·         Construction/Application ·         Student-Structured ·         Direct Evidence

(TABLE 2)

AllNurses speaks of the idea of utilization of both the traditional and authentic assessment within nursing curriculum for efficiency and monetary reasons.  However, I personally recognize the value to having utilized both types of assessment in the past, as well as the present and future, as they benefit the types of instruction provided within theory, simulation and clinical curriculums.

One of my personal beliefs regarding education is maintenance of an active learning style classroom; I maintain the same view with regard to assessment. Regardless of the assessment type, an instructor must identify ways to bond with each student, as well as an efficient way to feed forward and adapt curriculum instruction to meet the needs of current and future students.  In the 21^st century, utilization of Flipped Learning and modern technology (such as Screencastify) within grading of traditional style curriculum (such as multiple choice exams, essays, etc.) to create an interactive, engaging student-centered approach creates a personal and proactive assessment method.  Application of tools such as this also allow the instructor the ability to monitor and track the feedback provided to each student, note commonalities between students, issues and assessments, and develop a platform in which they might identify portions of curriculum that require revision for future instruction.

Teaching is about being creative and developing active, engaging curriculum that promotes student learning…creating assessments that are included under that same umbrella should be the priority of every future nursing instructor, I know it is one of mine.

Interdisciplinary Learning and Collaboration with Technology

As per the American Association of Critical Care Nurses (AACN), the 21^st century nursing student requires education within an interdisciplinary environment that fosters communication, teamwork, respect, and understanding, as well as joint collaboration to develop goals and make decisions that result in safe, quality patient care with positive outcomes.  

The importance of integrating interdisciplinary staff within nursing course curriculum offers the student the opportunity to learn to utilize and appreciate the importance of the relationship between the different acute and post-acute care departments that care for the patient.  Proper integration of technology within nursing curriculum provides the student with first-hand simulated experiences and situations that may occur within everyday clinical practice involving interdepartmental and interdisciplinary staff members.  Use of simulation laboratories in this manner  (like the one at Drexel University) has proven to be quite beneficial in the development and strengthening of interpersonal skills among students, as it allows the student the opportunity to develop clinical reasoning and critical thinking skills without the potential for clinical error within an actual patient care environment. 

Development of an interdisciplinary team approach, integration of electronic health records and medical administration records, simulation and other modern technologies within nursing curriculum provides nursing students with the framework needed to flourish post-graduation within the clinical environment.  Regardless of the venue a student might choose for employment, introductory teamwork skills ensure a new hire graduate nurse has the basic ability to appropriately communicate and collaborate a patient needs not only interdepartmentally, but also with interdisciplinary teams.  For instance, a new graduate registered nurse may opt for employment within a home health agency.  This nurse would have to have the basic know how to communicate and collaborate the patient care needs with the doctor’s office, and potentially a pharmacy, a medical equipment company, a physical or occupational therapist, a social worker or speech language pathologist in order to provide comprehensive, safe patient care in the home; the same would be true within an acute or post-acute care environment and with regard to the use of modern technologies.

                In conclusion, the more exposure the better….Utilization of modern technology within unique simulation experiences that incorporate interdepartmental and interdisciplinary teams within curriculum is truly required to ensure the growth and continued importance of nursing in healthcare today; it is also relevant to the cost of healthcare, vital to the continuity of safe, quality healthcare, and is insurance that newly graduated nurses are able to provide in the delivery of comprehensive, positive patient outcomes.

Graphic created by S.Bernardini RN, BSN, CPHM on 4.12.17

Interactive Use of Technology in the Nursing Classroom

Teaching in the 21^st century is such an exciting time!  Regardless of the age of the student, the type of education they are receiving or where the student is learning, technology has pointedly transformed the traditional classroom style learning that we all remember so well.  Today’s teacher has the ability to come out from behind the desk, step away from the chalkboard and interact with students in ways that have long surpassed pointing out where a country might be on a pull-down map or demonstrating how to utilize the card catalog; and nursing school is no exception to this rule, in fact, nursing school is the one place technology is now embraced.

With statistics rising with regard to the rise in number of patients, as well as the high number of nursing school applications versus the low number of available placement slots, current technologies have afforded nursing programs worldwide the ability to open up classrooms on a whole new level.  Utilization of online courses, virtual classrooms, and laboratory simulation are all examples of high level technology that has been used to overhaul nursing programs over the last five to ten years.  These big picture innovations, such as the simulation lab used by the Duke University nursing program, allow students opportunities that were never even thought imaginable 15, 30 or 60 years ago, as well as provide nursing instructors with the ability to provide active, out of the box clinical instruction.  Other, less invasive, yet innovative technologies that have assisted in advancing nursing curricula include audio-video tutorials, clickers in the classroom, smart-board technology, and webquest. 

These types of large and small scale interactive teaching/learning tools and strategies continue to drive my desire to teach the technologically savvy 21^st century student, as well as peek my curiosity regarding what type of radical, groundbreaking techniques we will begin utilize over the next five to ten years.  Much like the nurses of the late 19^th and early 20^th century, we are now the new aged pioneers of nursing. Via high level utilization of the internet and other technologies within our classrooms, laboratories and acute and post-acute patient care settings, we are swiftly blazing a trail of highly interactive, new wave, informatic and high-tech advances in nursing curriculum for future nurses and nursing students. 

The video below provides an excellent overview of the advances we are making in education and details the rapid growth in the utilization of technology in education.  With all of the technological advances, I look very forward to what the future brings me as a professor and the abundance of information and ways I can deliver information, provide resources and interact with my students!

The Nurse Educator in the 21st Century Age of Technology

INTRODUCTION:  Please Click Here for a quick intro to my blog. 

Graphic retrieved on 3.31.17 from:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TrYxbyIGQg

         During this age of student-centered pedagogy and technological enhancements, I envision the classroom that I teach in much differently than the memory of my own nursing classroom two plus decades ago.  The swift technological advances made over the last twenty years have driven the significant transformation to nursing, education, as well as the world of healthcare.  Nursing care, active teaching styles, and advancing technologies have prompted nurse educators all over the world to rethink the ways in which they engage students in the classroom, skills lab and clinical environments.  While I certainly appreciate the traditional teaching styles utilized by my predecessors, I recognize and appreciate the growth and look forward to the challenge of incorporating student-centered pedagogy and 21^st century technology into my classroom.  

The need to grow within the nursing profession became significantly evident within the 2010 IOM recommendations.  The directives reference swift and significant changes to nursing classrooms across the US, as the importance of utilizing innovative teaching strategies and technology to engage students has become significantly imperative as the need for nursing staff increases nationwide. The baby boomer generation has instigated a shift in the need for nurses prompting changes to admission policies, class sizes and teaching strategies throughout nursing programs in the US in an effort to meet increasing patient care needs.  Utilization of virtual learning experiences, online courses, computer simulation training, and hospital teaching units are just some of the ways nursing programs are beginning to meet the recommendations of the 2010 IOM utilizing 21^st century technology to meet increasing patient care needs across the country.  

As a nursing instructor in the 21^st century, I have accepted the challenge to maintain an innovate and active theory and clinical teaching environment for the students that I am fortunate to teach.  At the same time, it I am also committed to use of the QSEN competencies in an effort to ensure that my students maintain accountability, and provide safe, comprehensive and effective patient care throughout their clinical experiences as a student and future practicing nurse.  Providing state of the art comprehensive and efficient education to new nurses, as well as remaining dedicated to the legacy of a profession that is highly regarded as the most compassionate in the world, is the greatest way to ensure positive, quality student and patient outcomes in the future.

VIDEO:  21st Century Nursing