(NAPSI)—They save, prolong and improve lives and help others learn to do so as well, but all too often nurses and nurse educators have been taken for granted, overworked and overlooked. Now, however, they’re being honored throughout May, National Nurse’s Month.
What Nurse Practitioners Do
Here are just a few of the tasks these nurses take on:
•Take a patient’s medical history, perform exams, and order tests
•Manage the diagnosis and treatment of disease
•Write prescriptions and provide physician referrals
•Conduct certain medical tasks and procedures
A Problem
Unfortunately, according to the health policy journal Health Affair, a million current registered nurses are projected to retire by 2030.
A Solution
The good news is, nurse educators can make the difference. They provide their students with the necessary knowledge and advanced skills to succeed in the front lines of healthcare.
What Nurse Educators Do
•Identify and establish a personal teaching philosophy.
•Use data and analytics to design curricula, see what’s working and what isn’t, and discover ways to improve students’ academic experiences.
•Form early and strong relationships with colleagues.
Nurse educators must also possess and master soft skills such as communication, collaboration, partnership, management, leadership, and advocacy to mold capable and astute nurses.
They help their students address the health issues of diverse patient populations such as individuals from foreign countries who do not speak English and need an interpreter, low-income persons who can’t afford necessary procedures, and people in rural communities without access to high-quality care.
Nurses And Educators Can Get Help
That’s where the National League for Nursing can come in. It provides teaching resources to nurse educators and nurse practitioners working in different fields and various patient populations.
Dedicated to excellence in nursing, the National League for Nursing is the premier organization for nurse faculty and leaders in nursing education. The NLN offers professional development, networking opportunities, testing services, nursing research grants, and public policy initiatives to its nearly 45,000 individual and 1,100 institutional members, comprising nursing education programs across the spectrum of higher education and healthcare organizations.
“We know that one of the major obstacles to reversing the shortage of nurses is a lack of nurse educators and spots available for qualified applicants to nursing programs. There can be no better response to the critical shortage of nurses than to encourage more nurses to earn the requisite advanced degree to enter nursing education, and for master’s and doctoral-prepared nurses to join the ranks of National League for Nursing Certified Nurse Educators, the badge of expertise in this specialty area of practice,” said National League for Nursing President and CEO Beverly Malone, PhD, RN, FAAN.
One way the National League for Nursing works is by offering certification credentials to professional nurses and nurse educators in three distinct categories: one for academic nurse educators, one for academic clinical nurse educators, and one for novice nurse educators with fewer than three years’ experience teaching.
Learn More
For further information on nurses and nurse education, visit www.NLN.org.
"“There can be no better response to the critical shortage of nurses than to encourage more nurses to earn the requisite advanced degree to enter nursing education,” said National League for Nursing President and CEO Beverly Malone, PhD, RN, FAAN."
