NURS FPX 6103 The Nurse Educator Role Assessment 4 Creating a Professional Development Plan

Assessment 4: Creating a Professional Development Plan

Nurse education is a significant profession in nursing that requires excellent competencies. Indeed, nurse educators have a significant responsibility to change, shape, and improve future nursing. The achievement of these factors is highly contingent upon significant goals and a relevant professional development plan. This paper is a personal, professional development plan, where I highlight my goals, competencies, and plans that I will make to become a competent nurse educator as I serve my role as a professional nursing instructor. 

Area of Focus

My specific area of focus in nurse education is being an educator as a teacher professional. Nurse teachers professionals work in academic and hospital settings to prepare and mentor current and future nurses with theoretical and practical skills and develop curricula. In my nurse educator career, I wish to take up the role of a nursing teacher to develop future nurses who will be distinguished in their profession and render valuable and relevant services, including nursing services to the community. Nurse engagement in continuous learning and advanced education has become a critical aspect in enhancing the skills and knowledge of nurses to prepare them to handle emerging challenges in the healthcare discipline (Dempsey & Assi, 2018). Also, this learning prepares nurses to become nurse educators to train other nurses and engage in significant nursing research to propel nursing education under the scholarship expectation of a nurse educator. 

NURS FPX 6103 The Nurse Educator Role Assessment 4 Creating a Professional Development Plan

 However, as a master’s prepared nurse (MSN), one must possess various competencies to do their job effectively. First, a nursing teacher must manage to facilitate learning. The teacher must produce an environment in the classroom, clinical laboratory, and other academic and clinical settings that facilitate student learning for their cognition and achievement of the desired learning outcomes (Takase et al., 2019). Secondly, as an MSN-Prepared nurse, one must have a significant focus on quality. Indeed, they prepare students to become nurses to handle patients with life-threatening situations. Hence, they must focus on the quality of their instruction and instruction materials. They must have strategies that ensure they produce quality students. 

Professional Goals

For nurses to accomplish and meet their expectations and nurses, they must develop professional goals aligning with their roles and philosophy in nursing. As a nurse educator, my philosophy is to offer personalized care to all the patients I attend in the hospital rather than only treating their condition, hold my nursing students to high expectations with the understanding that they need practical tools, resources, and instructions without partiality or favoritism to become competent nurses, and serve the community the best way I can while undertaking research to address the issues facing nurse education. Following this philosophy, my professional goals would be to increase my technology skills, improve my efficiency, and refine my interpersonal skills.

My nursing educator philosophy claims that I intend to hold my students to high expectations and address their needs to access practical tools, resources, and instructions. My goal to increase my technology skill will address this part of the philosophy. Indeed, the nursing discipline changes with technological advancement (Locsin & Ito, 2018). Today, nurses are exposed to telehealth, simulation, and electronic health records. Therefore, increasing my technology skills will increase my technical understanding of the modern nursing discipline and trends in nursing and transfer the knowledge to my nursing students. Also, increasing my technology skills will allow me to conduct nursing research for my scholarship expectation as a nurse educator. Investigations in nursing and nurse education change with the changes in nursing as a field (Pepito & Locsin, 2019). Therefore, modern nursing research follows modern technology trends. For instance, data collection and analysis follow technological advancement’s modern analytical and statistical tools. 

Improving my efficiency will ensure that I dispense my duty effectively. For instance, being efficient will allow me to meet the equality policy in my nurse educator philosophy, where I intend to fight bigotry by ensuring equality for students irrespective of their diversity. This professional goal will also allow me to use minimal resources in my instructions, service delivery, and scholarship responsibilities. Lastly, refining my interpersonal skills as a professional goal will also be significant (Bifftu et al., 2018). It will allow me to interact seamlessly with my diverse student population. It will also allow me to understand the community I serve and interact with them seamlessly during my service delivery as a nurse educator and when collecting data for research to address my scholarship needs. 

Influences

Various forces work to undermine or support various nursing roles for nurse educators. As a professional nursing teacher, I expect to face some of these forces, including social, economic, and institutional forces. First, institutional policies will significantly affect my educator role in nursing. As a teacher, I can apply to different policies for different institutions. For instance, I could apply to an institution that does not admit women into its programs. Other institutions could fail to admit autistic or black students (Blanchet Garneau et al., 2018). As a nurse educator, this will influence my role because I desire to teach in a considerably diverse environment with diverse students. Secondly, social factors could also affect my nurse educator role. For instance, housing and transportation are significant social challenges facing many nurse educators (Williams et al., 2018). Accessing proper housing in some regions is challenging, affecting nurse educators. If they find proper housing, it could be far from their teaching institutions, requiring them to look for transport means if they do not drive. When transportation is a challenge, they do not make it to work in time. Also, the student population could be a social and economic challenge simultaneously. Some institutions could admit many nursing students. However, because of resource constraints, they flock in nursing halls, where their ratio does not match that of nursing teachers (Saukkoriipi et al., 2020). Teaching a high population could be ineffective because some students will always lag in the curriculum. These could be factors I anticipate will influence my role as a nurse educator.

Analysis

In the educator role as a nurse, it is vital to prepare for the scholarship role because it is one of the expectations of a nurse educator. Also, current academic systems recognize nursing scholarship activities in research and resident teaching (Chou et al., 2019). Hence, as a nursing teacher, I must engage in activities that systematically advance teaching in nursing, research, and nurse practice through significant, peer-reviewed, replicated, creative, and documented investigations. As such, I must follow a model in my scholarship activities since nurse educators suggest navigating the scholarship path using a model. As a nurse, I will use the Boyer model, which incorporates discovery, teaching, application, and integration in my scholarship path. Under the discovery aspect, I will focus on the traditional tenets of scholarship, discovering new models or information theories on nurse education and nurse education trends (Chesak et al., 2021). Discovery will also allow me to undertake philosophical inquiries, research, and analysis conforming to empirical and historical evidence in nurse education. I will also engage in nursing and nurse education theory development and focus on nursing collaboration with other disciplines. 

Under the teaching aspect in the Boyer model, I will engage in various activities, including participating in innovative teaching and testing strategies, developing skills and disseminating knowledge, demonstrating expertise as a faculty member, teaching in formal and informal settings, and conducting research that produce knowledge to facilitate learning. The application aspect of the model will allow me to search for knowledge to solve practical problems, serve the community’s interests, and conduct inquiries generated through service practice in the nursing profession (Chesak et al., 2021). Lastly, under integration, I will integrate knowledge from different sources, combine different findings, and identify nursing and nursing education trends.

NURS FPX 6103 The Nurse Educator Role Assessment 4 Creating a Professional Development Plan

Leadership Role

 Nurse education is demanding as other nurses look upon nurse educators to guide them in their practice. While teaching plays a significant role in nurse guidance on theoretical and practical skills acquisition, it is insufficient to produce distinguished nurses. It requires practical leadership skills for nurses, especially teachers, to complement their teaching to produce competent nurses (Dempsey & Assi, 2018). In my practice as a nurse educator, I will take various actions to develop my leadership. First, I will endeavor to be proactive. Indeed, many problems and challenges arise in nursing and nursing education. Although they find solutions, people solve them only after they have created a problem, which takes more resources. As a nurse educator, I intend to be an effective leader in my discipline by being proactive, where I will address identify problems before they arise and address them. This approach will save resources and ensure efficiency in my leadership.

           Secondly, I will learn delegation as a leadership practice. Some nurse educators think that they become strong leaders by doing everything themselves. However, this does not always produce strong leaders. The best leaders understand that they cannot handle everything on their own. Hence, they surround themselves with an experienced support team and delegate tasks to others (Hidayat et al., 2021). As a leader in nurse education, I will delegate some responsibilities to my subordinates to allow them to rise to my level and increase their responsibility in the discipline. Through delegation, I will establish a significant team of nurse educators, who will be responsible and allow them to rise in their roles. Lastly, I will volunteer in committees and other functions in my discipline. For instance, I can volunteer in nursing committees in hospitals or community services committees. Volunteering is a way to demonstrate leadership because it shows that a person is willing to lead in a particular role without expecting anything in return (Dempsey & Assi, 2018). However, although I will not expect any financial gains from my volunteer work, I will learn much about leadership and dealing with people, contributing significantly to my leadership experience.  

Development Plan

As part of my development plan as a nurse educator, I plan to undertake various actions and activities. First, I understand that quality education is one of the most significant competencies of nurse educators. Therefore, I will take the initiative to further my education. The master’s level is not the last level of education in nurse education (Bullin, 2018). Hence, I will take the next level of studies to add my skills and knowledge in nursing. Moreover, I will take certifications that will allow me to be certified in nursing research and become a competent leader in developing nursing education learning programs. Secondly, I will develop and improve my interpersonal skills. As an educator, I will interact significantly with faculty members, students, patients, and community members when disseminating my duties. Working in a highly social environment will dictate that I interact with the people I meet for various purposes. Therefore, to develop myself as a competent nurse educator, I will develop essential people skills, including communication, collaboration, and encouragement. 

           As a nurse educator, one of the expectations that I must meet is scholarships responsibilities. This role presents a significant development opportunity for nurses and nurse educators. As part of my development plan, I will undertake meaningful inquiries in nurse education and publish them in scholarly works. I will advocate for changes in nurse education in the inquiries that I will conduct. Lastly, I will attend nursing conferences to learn from experienced nurses and nurse educators who have more experience than me. These conferences could also serve as a platform for presenting my scholarly works as a nurse educator.

Reflection

Indeed, professional development is a challenging path many people fail to travel. People get hired for various positions and never rise in ranks or increase their competency. However, I do not wish to sit and relax in my career. The above professional development plan is demanding, meaning I must work tirelessly to accomplish it and develop my profession as a nurse educator. I believe I can accomplish what I want because of several factors. First, I am passionate about becoming a competent nurse educator. This passion will motivate me to do what it takes to accomplish my goals. Secondly, I like learning new things, which will allow me to conduct much research in nurse education. Lastly, I believe in competition for efficiency and change. Although I will not be competing with other nurse educators, I will set targets that I must strive to achieve. 

References

Bifftu, B. B., Dachew, B. A., Tiruneh, B. T., Ashenafie, T. D., Tegegne, E. T., & Worku, W. Z. (2018). Effective clinical teaching behaviors views of nursing students and nurse educators at the University of Gondar, Northwest Ethiopia: Cross-sectional institution based study. Journal of caring sciences, 7(3), 119. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc6163158/

Blanchet Garneau, A., Browne, A. J., & Varcoe, C. (2018). Drawing on antiracist approaches toward a critical antidiscriminatory pedagogy for nursing. Nursing Inquiry, 25(1), e12211. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/nin.12211

Bullin, C. (2018). To what extent has doctoral (Ph.D.) education supported academic nurse educators in their teaching roles: an integrative review. BMC Nursing, 17(1), 1-18. https://bmcnurs.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12912-018-0273-3

Chesak, S. S., Rhudy, L. M., Tofthagen, C., & Chlan, L. L. (2021). A practice‐based model to guide nursing science and improve the health and well‐being of patients and caregivers. Journal of Clinical Nursing. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jocn.15837

Chou, C. L., Kalet, A., Costa, M. J., Cleland, J., & Winston, K. (2019). Guidelines: The dos, don’ts and don’t know of remediation in medical education. Perspectives on medical education, 8(6), 322-338. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40037-019-00544-5

Dempsey, C., & Assi, M. J. (2018). The impact of nurse engagement on quality, safety, and the experience of care: what nurse leaders should know. Nursing administration quarterly, 42(3), 278-283. https://journals.lww.com/naqjournal/FullText/2018/07000/The_Impact_of_Nurse_Engagement_on_Quality,_Safety,.14.aspx

NURS FPX 6103 The Nurse Educator Role Assessment 4 Creating a Professional Development Plan

Hidayat, A. T., Hariyati, R. T. S., & Nuraini, T. (2021). The factor of affecting head nurse’s delegation: A cross sectional study. Enfermería Clínica, 31, S117-S121. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1130862120305660

Locsin, R. C., & Ito, H. (2018). Can humanoid nurse robots replace human nurses? Journal of Nursing, 5(1), 1-6. https://www.academia.edu/download/55593272/Can_humanoid_nurse_robots_replace_human_nurses.pdf

Pepito, J. A., & Locsin, R. (2019). Can nurses remain relevant in a technologically advanced future?. International journal of nursing sciences, 6(1), 106-110. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352013218301765

Saukkoriipi, M., Tuomikoski, A. M., Sivonen, P., Kärsämänoja, T., Laitinen, A., Tähtinen, T., … & Mikkonen, K. (2020). Clustering clinical learning environment and mentoring perceptions of nursing and midwifery students: A cross‐sectional study. Journal of advanced nursing, 76(9), 2336-2347. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jan.14452

Takase, M., Niitani, M., Imai, T., & Okada, M. (2019). Students’ perceptions of teaching factors that demotivate their learning in lectures and laboratory-based skills practice. International journal of nursing sciences, 6(4), 414-420. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352013219301796

Williams, S. D., Phillips, J. M., & Koyama, K. (2018). Nurse Advocacy: Adopting health in all policies approach. Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 23(3). http://ojin.nursingworld.org/MainMenuCategories/ANAMarketplace/ANAPeriodicals/OJIN/TableofContents/Vol-23-2018/No3-Sept-2018/Policy-Advocacy.html