Nurse educators place emphasis on the importance of continuing education in advancing the nursing profession. They have a sole responsibility of informing their peers, patients, student nurses, and communities concerning limitless health issues. In essence, they play a vital function in enhancing nursing practices through role modeling and leadership as part of the EBP process. In response to this week’s discussion, I will discuss some of the ways through which I have demonstrated my function as an educator at My Home Clinic. I will also reveal how I anticipate integrating this feature into my future career.
I currently work as an ARNP Family Nurse Practitioner. I have demonstrated my roles as an educator given this role in the following capacity. First, I often educate my patients on disease prevention and management. The role further extends to the importance of adhering to an appropriate treatment care plan as initiated by the health care professional. Through patient education, I impart medical information to patients as well as their non-professional caregivers in home care environments. This move centers on improving their health statuses as well as health seeking behavior (Juliann & Delaney, 2013).
Second, I increasingly acknowledge health education as a vital tool used by advanced practice nurses in the promotion of preventive care among vulnerable populations. The primary elements here include educating my current patients on responsibility and skill building when it comes to health care. The primary focus is finding ways through which patients in homecare environments can make significant lifestyle changes (National League for Nursing, 2013).
Either way, both roles reveal the value I have had on patient education, further broken down into three main areas identified in the following discussion. First, through patient education, I have enhanced my patients’ understanding of different medical conditions as well as their effective means of management. Second, patient education continues to act as a guide in the improvement of self-care, when acting in the absence of primary care physicians. Third, the process is vital in ensuring increased compliance to care and efficient utilization of health services for enhanced patient outcomes (Gatti-Petito, et al., 2013).
In future, I intend to expand my roles as a nurse educator in nursing school and the larger community. That is, given a potential future role as a member of the faculty, I will integrate this function into practice by designing, implementing, and evaluating educational material for nursing students, peers, and the community. From the academic perspective, such material includes learning modules that can result in basic and higher educational qualifications. Contrarily, the community will benefit from my brochures, aimed at educating on important processes related to preventive interventions and disease management (Bellini, McCauley, and Cusson, 2012).
This capacity requires that I follow the idea that as a professional nurse educator, I possess the skills needed to lend an authoritative voice on various health issues. My practice settings could cover nursing schools, home care environments, hospitals, and the community. In academic contexts, I could work with undergraduate nurses, APRNs, or other nurses interested in advancing their skills concerning patient care in other environments (Gatti-Petito, et al., 2013).
This future role demands that I commit to lifelong learning, scholarly development, and leadership. Also, I should attain a strong knowledge-set of teaching, evaluation, and learning practices. Such qualities advance the ability to design programs that reflect sound nursing principles as well as assess the learners’ needs. Furthermore, I need to become flexible in anticipation of changing roles of the future nurse and respond to ongoing innovations in nursing practice. Finally, I require counseling and research skills, as vital elements in the delivery of a sound educational program to non-professional audiences (National League for Nursing, 2013).
References
Bellini, S., McCauley, P., & Cusson, R. M. (2012). The Doctor of Nursing Practice Graduate as Faculty Member. Nursing Clinics of North America, 47(4), 547-556. doi:dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cnur.2012.07.004
Gatti-Petito, J., Lakatos, B. E., Bradley, H. B., Cook, L., Haight, I. E., & Karl, C. A. (2013). Clinical Scholarship and Adult Learning Theory: A role for the DNP in nursing education. Nursing Education Perspectives, 34 (4) , 273-276.
Juliann, S., & Delaney, W. C. (2013). Doctor of Nursing Practice Programs: Opportunities for Faculty Development. Journal of Nursing Education, 52 (8), 453-461. doi:dx.doi.org/10.3928/01484834-20130722-02
National League for Nursing. (2013). A Vision for Doctoral Preparation for Nurse Educators . Retrieved from National League for Nursing: http://www.nln.org/docs/default-source/about/nln-vision-series-(position-statements)/nlnvision_6.pdf
