Remember being a child and being excited for school to end and summer break to start? That feeling of jubilation when you get home on the final day knowing you have the next couple of months free from tight schedules, homework, and deadlines to meet. Then you get to adulthood, and you realize unless you chose a career in education, you likely would no longer experience this summertime sensation. I can admit that thought crossed my mind early in my undergraduate journey. But the desire to help others and become a nurse far outweighed my concern for having a traditional “summer break”.
After finishing nursing school and working at the bedside for 5 years, the opportunity to become an adjunct faculty member presented itself. I jumped at the chance to have more of a role in teaching and have never once regretted that decision. Not long after transitioning to this new role, I realized my schedule was about to look a lot different! Nursing programs often follow traditional Fall and Spring semesters and most undergraduate programs do not have clinical rotations in the Summer. But you quickly learn that Summer becomes filled with other tasks such as making revisions to coursework as well as preparing for the next school year. It’s a different kind of workload, but equally important. The role of the nurse educator reaches so much farther than just the in class or clinical instructor component. You must plan, prepare, organize, and coordinate curriculum and learning experiences long before you deliver them to your learners.
This summer in particular I have had the opportunity to dive a little deeper into this part of nursing education and I have loved it!! Getting the chance to make revisions to coursework and being able to collaborate with our Digital Campus team to build and adapt our online courses has been such an amazing learning experience for me. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic nurse educators were faced with the challenge of finding ways to adapt teaching strategies so that we could in fact continue to deliver our curriculum in order to move students forward within the nursing program. While this challenge presented frustrations, it also has led us to new methods to reach our students and deliver our curriculum successfully. What does your summer look like? What opportunities await you as a nurse educator? Would you be interested in exploring the role of the nurse educator further? Perhaps now is the time!
Learn more about how you can pursue a career as a nurse educator through Walsh University’s Master of Science in Nursing - Nurse Educator (BSN to MSN-NE) and Doctor of Nursing Practice – Nurse Educator (BSN to DNP-NE) programs, offered fully online!
My name is Colleen Wiley and I am a nurse educator. Growing up I always wanted to be a teacher, but I also had an interest in learning about science. I have always loved helping people which is why I chose to pursue a career in nursing. I spent my time in undergraduate nursing school working as a nurse intern on a medical surgical unit. After graduation in 2005, I worked at the bedside caring for post-operative patients and I loved it! Eventually, I started offering to train new employees and I would also take on nursing students for their clinical preceptorship. It was then that I truly realized my real passion was seeded in becoming a nurse educator! I started working as an adjunct clinical instructor in 2010 and immediately knew this was the path for me. A fire was lit inside of me! That burning feeling of helping others was reignited as I shifted my focus from helping sick and/or recovering patients in the acute setting to helping students learn how to become a nurse. I pursued a graduate degree in nursing education which I earned in December of 2014. I have been working as a nurse educator ever since I took that first leap back in 2010.
