This chapter discusses the historical background of the mentor connection and mentoring relationships in nursing, different types of support relationships and mentors. It also discusses why and when nurse need mentors and early career challenges and mentoring. The mentor connection is a developmental, empowering, nurturing relationship extending over time, in which mutual sharing, learning, and growth occur in an atmosphere of respect, collegiality, and affirmation. Clearly, mentor connections and networks were integral to the developmental experience of successful career-oriented men. Mentoring is a vital component of professional nursing and that mentors are essential for nurses’ ongoing development and leadership achievement. In organizations, mentoring relationships serve as an antidote to disrespectful attitudes and behaviors among nurses and physicians and other health care providers. Mentors mentoring activities can be broken down into two categories: career functions and psychosocial functions.

David C. Pate learned about nurses as leaders from an early experience as a volunteer in a busy surgical intensive care unit. The professional status imbalance between medicine and nursing is often learned in medical and nursing education, and certainly often is dominant in the clinical arenas. One of Pate’s most important messages is the potential for nursing leadership in health care delivery in the future. The chief nursing officer (CNO) was an integral part of the team expected to be able to explain the vision, inspire the employees to achieve their goals, demonstrate accountability, participate in setting the strategies, and engage in their team meetings whether the subject involved patient care or not. The CNO/nurse executive will be critical in redesigning the health care delivery system of the future. Nurses and nurse leaders can and must lead this change in the care model together with physicians and other providers.

In times past, leadership of schools of medicine and nursing would have directed their efforts to the education of autonomous professionals. Our educational systems have matured to the point that they focus, in a collaborative professional practice model, on the tenets of our professions and the needs of those we serve. In the health care setting, be it subacute or acute; inpatient or outpatient; low or high intensity; or community or academic in its orientation, each patient needs advocacy. Interprofessional clerkships allow nursing students to form teams with their future health care delivery partners, as they pursue learning opportunities in clinical, community, and policy pursuits. Nurses can play a key role in the education of patients and the improvement of the patient condition.

This chapter addresses an influential aspect of leadership in nursing how it is perceived by others. The term “nurse” represents a wide range of roles, work experiences, and educational levels. Duke University Hospital (DUH), the flagship hospital of the Duke University Health System (DUHS), is a 924-bed tertiary care facility, and Kevin Sowers, serves as its president. The chapter highlights two recommendations salient to the issue of nursing leadership: expansion of opportunities for nurses to lead and diffuse collaborative improvements; and preparing and enabling nurses to lead change to advance health. The future is bright for nursing, with increasing roles and responsibility, particularly in leading and providing direct primary and advanced care. Health care cost is growing at unsustainable rates with challenges of providing access and achieving consistent quality of care. Modernizing nursing education and training to meet the emerging and complex needs also requires strong leadership as well as partnerships.

Around the globe many academic nursing and service organizations are developing programs across national borders to engage in global health improvement. Sustainability of global health programs requires planning in order to achieve outcomes that address change and innovation that continues after the visiting partners depart or the funding ends. Effective programs require program or project design factors that have been clearly defined, negotiated, adequately funded, and considered needs for training; include capacity building factors; and plan for sustainable innovations. Capacity building factors include structures and formal linkages, champions or leaders who engage stakeholders, administrative policies, adequate resources, and expertise to sustain innovations or program interventions. Attributes for sustainable innovations include the alignment between the program and the needs of the stakeholders, effective relationships, and ownership across stakeholder partners. This chapter presents a case study on sustaining public nursing education in Liberia.

This chapter provides an alternative view of traditional leadership, describing assumptions of leadership in global health and how these assumptions, along with leadership skills, can be adapted fluidly among members of global health projects in order to maintain partnerships. Global health nursing leadership occurs within organizations and the highest levels of government, but the concept of leadership in global health nursing extends to nurses working within nongovernmental organizations or serving as volunteers on health care teams. Critical team leadership roles include the following: convener, visionary, strategist, and team builder. Leadership roles will continue to emerge throughout the partnership as the need arises, and partners will assume leadership roles according to their personal and professional skills as well as experience. The chapter then provides two case studies that demonstrate the challenges involved in maintaining partnerships between academic institutions in different countries.

This chapter explores the resources that are essential for any health program to succeed and are key components of partnership and sustainability. Resources can be considered to be human, material, or financial in nature. Reports indicate that a shortage of human, material, and financial resources adversely affect the ability of nurses to meet their professional expectations to promote and restore population health. Nurses are often involved directly with each of these types of resources. The chapter then explains the Regis College Haiti Project (RCHP) developed by International Nurse Faculty Partnership Initiative (INFPI) to equip the educators and build up the human infrastructure of nursing and nursing education in Haiti. It also presents a case study that explains the importance of planning and ongoing evaluation for academic partnerships in global health settings.

Many people, including nurses, assume that living and working in an area that is considered multicultural or culturally diverse automatically makes them culturally astute or competent. In clinical competency, there are many models for working within cultures, yet cultural safety and cultural competence are learned skills like any other clinical competency. Working within cultures is a dynamic process, and building bridges within cultures is a skill set that should be honed. The chapter provides a case study of Aboriginal peoples in Canada to illustrate the building of bridges within cultures. It also presents a case study that illustrates how Aga Khan University School of Nursing (AKUSON) has transformed the face of nursing education and empowered women in the developing world by heavily investing in faculty development.

This chapter focuses on partnerships between low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and higher income countries (HICs). It presents information about three types of international partnerships. The first type is partnerships that focus on academic education, prelicensure as well as advanced degree programs. The second type is partnerships that focus on advances in professional nursing, which provide professional development for nurse leaders and clinicians in specific settings and capacity-building measures for the profession in the host country. The third type is partnerships that provide direct clinical care or improve a specific aspect of health care in a developing country. The chapter addresses the host partner factors and presents a case study that reports on the educational partnership between the Alice Ramez Chagoury School of Nursing (ARCSON), the Lebanese American University (LAU), and the University of New Mexico College of Nursing (UNMCON).

Ongoing project support is a crucial part of any global health venture that involves any hope for long-term, sustainable effects. Developing a specific strategy for ongoing support at the inception of a global health endeavor will involve defining the overall life span and specific stages of the project and budgeting for appropriate resources and personnel to support all stages, even those when minimal contact is planned with the target country or population. Ongoing project support often involves monitoring and evaluation that can potentially be used to answer research questions. Evaluation is an important aspect of all project-based work not only for improved project performance, but also to demonstrate results for funders. This chapter presents two case studies, one on the interprofessional partnerships with a telehealth project in Waslala, Nicaragua and the other on the use of technology to support an ongoing partnership for nursing education in Uganda.

This chapter focuses on factors that began the process of silencing the voices of the immigrant midwives. In debating the ‘midwife problem’, much was written in the early 1900s about the abysmal mortality and morbidity statistics at that time. A New York State midwifery law enacted on June 6, 1907, empowered this city to adopt rules and regulations and adopt ordinances governing the practice of midwifery. Carolyn Conant Van Blarcom was one of the first voices to advocate that nurses, particularly public health nurses, be trained in midwifery. First School for midwives in the United States was the Bellevue school for Midwives, opened in July 1911. The enticement to childbearing woman that took them into the hospital was the promise of painless childbirth from the use of twilight sleep. Nursing underwent professionalization with national organizations, journals, and educational programs and standards approximately 50 years after medicine did in the mid-1800s.

This chapter describes the components of a professional practice model (PPM) implementation plan. Planning, selecting strategies, and ensuring accountability for PPM implementation requires a working group of diverse nursing professionals from multiple levels of a health system to fully capture their expertise and insights. The chapter reviews the steps of the implementation process and provides examples of a strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities/threats (SWOT) analysis, broad goal statements, and measurable objectives. It demonstrates the distinction between goals and objectives and suggests criteria for selecting among many implementation strategies. The chapter explores several implementation strategies: such as education, modification of work roles, workflow redesign, effective communication, and ongoing support and enrichment. It explains accountability for the plan’s implementation in terms of assigning responsibility, prioritizing goals, and setting realistic time frames for completion. Finally, the chapter presents the key success factors, including an optimistic leadership tone.

This chapter highlights some of the driving forces in the changes that have taken place since the new millennium in health care. The major driving forces in health care have been the Affordable Care Act, the Institute of Medicine's report on the future of nursing, technology, genomics, and global health. The Institute of Medicine's (2010) Future of Nursing report has had a profound effect on the nursing profession. The report includes four key messages and eight recommendations. The four key messages are: nurses should practice to the full extent of their education and training, nurses should achieve higher levels of education and training through an improved education system that promotes seamless academic progression, nurses should be full partners, with physicians and other health professionals, in redesigning health care in the United States, and effective workforce planning and policy making require better data collection and an improved information infrastructure.

The advent of the associate degree in nursing (ADN) model for the education of nurses in the early 1950s was a watershed event in the history of nursing education in the United States. This chapter argues that the little-discussed but highly organized efforts to prepare faculty to teach in the newly created ADN programs in the late 1950s serve as an exemplar for the continued efforts of the profession to provide a more educated nursing workforce. It provides a brief overview of how the ADN was developed and then explores the efforts of nurse leaders to educate the faculty for these new programs, which were opening at breakneck speed across the United States beginning in the late 1950s. The chapter presents the development of Bronx Community College (BCC), not far from Teachers College (TC) and one of the faculty demonstration projects in New York, as the case study.

This chapter centers on the importance of family and social support when one “return” to school. It provides examples of how nurses prepared their immediate family members for their decision as well as strategies they used when family or friends were not supportive. Throughout the literature, the value of family and other types of social support for returning students is evident for all levels of nursing education. This support not only facilitates a nurse’s decision to apply to school but also impacts persistence to complete a program. A common dilemma for nurses who returned to school was how to get their family members to pitch in and help take over some of the household tasks. The chapter addresses the need for nurses to take a serious look at their activities and obligations and determine which to keep, which to put on hold, and which to eliminate.

This chapter reviews prevention, including genetic counseling. It discusses genetic testing for diagnosis as opposed to screening and the treatment for genetic disease. Methods of prevention begin with education of the public and health care professionals and identification of those at risk. Genetic counseling is the process of helping people understand and adapt to the medical, psychological, and familial implications of genetic contributions to disease. The malignant cells often exhibit aneuploidy as well as translocations that are found only within the tumor cells. Genetic errors that arise from specific cell lines are somatic mutations. It is suggested that there is a thorough collection of family, genetic, and medical history for children entering the adoption process. Nurses may play a variety of roles in genetic counseling that reflect their preparation, area of practice, primary functions, and setting. The chapter explains the incidence of chromosome abnormalities.

Florence Nightingale had a significant impact on the nursing profession: She is often referred as the founder of modern-day nursing. This chapter provides a brief insight into her life and workings. It describes the timeline of events in Florence Nightingale's life and Florence Nightingale Pledge. Florence Nightingale played an influential and pivotal role during the Crimean War. The chapter describes the foundations of nursing theory. Nightingale's model of nursing is a four-step process that includes observation, identification of needed environment alteration, implementation of the alteration, and identification of the current health state. During the 19th century, formalized training programs began to emerge, and many were based on the Nightingale Principles of Nursing Education. She developed a formal nursing school called the Nightingale School of Nursing. This chapter outlines the timeline of nurse-training programs in late 19th-century America and their general admission criteria. It also describes nurse-training programs around the world.

This chapter explains the diverse choices nurses have when making a decision to go back to college. It discusses what to assess in a school, followed by what to assess in a nursing program; however, it does not matter which nurses do first as long as one evaluate both. Selecting the right school and program to meet their educational goals is an important decision. As a consumer of higher education, nurses may need to consider a number of factors that will influence what choice they make. Doctoral nursing programs traditionally offer courses on the history and philosophy of nursing and the development and testing of nursing and other health-care techniques, as well as the social, economic, political, and ethical issues important to the field. Data management and research methodology are also areas of instruction”. Some nursing programs offer service-learning experiences, which are different from the traditional clinical experiences.

Deans/directors need to realize that their success is highly dependent on the success of students in their school/college/department. First and foremost, for a dean/director to be successful, students enrolling in all of the school/college/department’s nursing programs must succeed in graduating. Graduates must then be successful in passing licensure and/or certification exams. It cannot be overemphasized that the administrative and academic success of a dean/director is manifested through her or his students. This chapter describes approaches for fostering academic success among nursing students. Before a nursing student officially enrolls in any nursing courses for credit, he or she needs to have developed an array of study habits that work. Time is a resource that each student must allocate wisely. Even though students and faculty have busy schedules, it is highly advisable for students to schedule and keep regular appointments with their advisers. The chapter finally discusses the institutional resources.

This chapter describes the landmark reports that influenced nursing and the evolution of training schools. It also describes the evolution of diploma programs, associate degree programs, and baccalaureate degree programs. The chapter outlines the timeline of important events in nursing education and lists the early nurse leaders who influenced nursing education. It explains why nurses supported advanced degrees in master's and doctoral programs. This chapter describes the current trends resulting in the expansion of nurse practitioner programs and the requirements of licensure. It analyses how nurse education in the United States compares with that in other countries.

This chapter talks about effects of health policy on nursing practice and the roles of nurses in advocacy and social activism. It describes the contributions of Lavinia Lloyd Dock, Isabel Hampton Robb, and Mary Adelaide Nutting in nursing education and social activism. Lavinia Lloyd Dock was a nurse, feminist, author, pioneer in nursing education, and social activist. She campaigned for women's suffrage. Dock, with the assistance of Isabel Hampton Robb and Nutting, founded the American Society of Superintendents of Training Schools for Nurses of the United States and Canada, which became the National League for Nursing. They advocated for health care policy that addressed issues of social justice and equity in health care. Dock, Robb, and Nutting understood how clinical practice was derived from regulations, laws, and policies. They were committed to long-term careers that strengthened nursing education and brought transformational change to nursing and health care.

Joy and satisfaction may be found in serving in the position of dean/director of a nursing school, college, or department, but stresses may also be encountered. The joy and satisfaction that a dean/director can experience flows mainly from two sources: building a culture and environment of happiness and joy in the school, college, or department and implementing, and witnessing the fulfillment of the vision for nursing education. This chapter offers an overview of the demands of deaning and directing; qualifications, competencies, and personal qualities of nursing deans and directors; and best practices for finding joy and satisfaction as a nursing dean/director in the context of a very complex, intense, and challenging role.

This chapter focuses on the importance of the application process. It reviews the article by Jones that has a comprehensive review of all the steps necessary to apply to a graduate nursing program, including the application process, Graduate Record Examination (GRE), letters of recommendation, and sample interview questions. Some programs accept credits from challenge exams. These standardized tests assess a student’s mastery of a subject and are available for a variety of topics. Some colleges or programs have a list of what they want us to include in a portfolio, others contract with services such as the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL) to complete a prior learning assessment (PLA).

Recruitment of talented, high-caliber faculty and staff is one of the most important aspects of leading a nursing program. Recruitment is also one of the most difficult aspects of the job of deans/directors. Retention of faculty and staff is often directly related to the relationship they have with the unit’s leader. This chapter addresses issues regarding recruitment and retention of faculty and staff as well as strategies to tackle the challenges. It shares the best practices for faculty and staff recruitment and retention from the experience and perspective of the author. Recruitment and retention of qualified faculty and staff challenge even the most experienced nursing dean/director. There are many opportunities and strategies to effectively address these challenges.

This chapter discusses how to align nurse’s work setting with their educational goals. It outlines information on utilizing employee benefits, negotiating their work schedule to fit with school, and strategies on getting their supervisor and colleagues on board with their decision. The nursing literature cites employee benefits as an incentive for nurses to return to school. Despite the investment required to support such benefits, improved nurse satisfaction and retention rates may offset such costs for employers. Some employers have a limited number of scholarships or loans available to potential students. Child care is another benefit offered by some employers. Some nurses experience a supportive environment, where their employers as well as colleagues encourage lifelong learning. Other ways in which employers may contribute include sponsoring an onsite Toastmasters club, offering a mentorship program, or hosting a recognition ceremony when nurses complete a degree.

Several factors played a part in the growth and expansion of nursing as a profession, and the Crimean War in Europe and the Civil War in America had a profound effect. The role of nurses in the early part of the 19th century was fairly similar to that in the 18th century; however, by the latter part of the century, conditions were vastly improved. Training programs were established, and Florence Nightingale had a major influence on health care, nursing, and nursing education. This chapter describes what nursing in the 19th century was like and who the influential nurses were during this period. It explains how nursing and medicine were influenced by the Civil War and how the medical model influenced nurse-training programs. The chapter also describes initial training programs in nursing and the timeline of early nurse-training programs. It describes the evolution of nursing matrons in 19th-century England.

The chapter highlights some of the forces behind the movement toward a more highly educated nursing workforce. It describes how the decision to return to school is a process that can occur at any time during the nursing career. The chapter provides information as well as strategies to help people begin their journey forward and to achieve their educational and career goals. Many nurses plan to continue their education but hesitate because they want to wait until life settles down before returning to school. The transtheoretical model; TTM is a model that may provide a framework to describe the process nurses go through when making the decision to return to school. TTM is composed of four constructs: stages of change, decisional balance, self-efficacy, and processes of change. The personal and professional transformation that results from people decision to return to school can be invigorating and lead to so many opportunities.

This chapter examines how education shapes the role of the nurse and explores the issues related to the enduring confusion about education, practice, and roles. It does so by examining the historical development of three educational pathways into nursing and the unintended consequences of each as we continue to treat them all the same. The chapter presents the histories of the three educational pathways: the Bellevue School of Nursing, as diploma case study; the University of Cincinnati (UC) School of Nursing and Health, as BSN case study; and the Cooperative Research Project (CRP) in Junior and Community College Education for Nursing, as ADN case study. The major purpose of the Society was to ‘establish and maintain a universal standard of training’ to regain control of nursing. Nurse leaders acknowledged the rapidly changing environment of nurses’ work both in the hospital and in public health and proposed higher education for nurses.

This chapter explores the value of preparing mentally and emotionally for a return to school. It provides suggestions on how to handle change, both in nurse’s personal life as well as in the academic environment. In the past, many nursing programs structured their courses around lectures and readings, with associated tests used to measure knowledge on a topic. This type of passive learning, based on rote memorization, does not utilize higher cognitive skills such as critical thinking and synthesis. The chapter highlights the ideas on how to self-assess nurse attitudes and behaviors so they can form a positive outlook and presents some simple stress-management techniques that may help when things get tough. To foster self-discipline, most nurses felt it was important to set up a schedule for school, as it was easy for other responsibilities to divert them or put things off until it was too late.

This chapter examines the technologies and current trends, programmatic requirements, and student, faculty, and senior leadership traits to be successful in online learning environments and management systems used in nursing education. Learning management systems continue to be hubs on which institutions base their online learning, but a variety of accompaniments are being added to enhance the student experience and expand the instructor’s toolbox for education. These accompaniments provide improved communication, increased collaboration, and the creation and distribution of high-quality audio/video learning objects. With the ever-expanding market for online education and technology, it is important to reinforce the true reason behind using any technology—to support the learner, instructor, and learning objectives at all levels. In order for the technology used to reach its maximum potential, instructors and students need to embrace the necessary competencies, be creative, and always be open to a new learning opportunity.

The demands of preparing to serve in combat and live within the military ethos are sources of strengths and vulnerabilities for veterans. This chapter summarizes those psychiatric disorders commonly seen among veterans in both student and client roles and to assist educators to integrate knowledge about veteran mental health concerns into educator and clinical faculty roles. It challenges educators to operate from within their educator role by developing a necessary context to educate veterans who may be struggling emotionally, behaviorally, and psychologically. Additionally, the chapter provides insights for faculty who are preparing students to work with veterans as patients and clients. That being said, the chapter provides the reader with a composite picture of Global War on Terrorism veteran, common mental health concerns affecting veterans, a military centric stress first aid framework from which to assess and respond to crisis, and two vignettes designed to apply the introduced concepts.

Veterans may experience complex health problems as a result of their time in military service. Such health concerns can include physical sequelae of training and time in service regardless of deployment status. These health problems may include Gulf War illness, orthopedic problems, neurological injuries, or chronic pain. Many of these diagnoses will be comorbid, meaning the veteran may experience more than one service-related diagnosis, or the service-related diagnosis may occur concurrently with other health problems that are unrelated to service. Many of these diagnoses may also intersect with mental health issues such as posttraumatic stress disorder. Caregivers of veterans with ongoing health problems may also experience health challenges. This chapter provides a background to understanding health problems experienced by veterans as well as describes each healthcare topic. Each of these complex medical issues has implications for nursing practice and education. Research implications are also noted.

This chapter helps the learner to identify the roles of the MSN-prepared nurse in interprofessional collaboration (IC); determine strategies to engage others in IC; and examine challenges that may arise when participating in IC. It also evaluates the need for shared goals when participating in IC and develops strategies to navigate candid conversations. The American Nurses Association (2015) defines IC as “integrated enactment of knowledge, skills, and values and attitudes that define working together across the professions, with other health care workers, and with patients, along with families and communities, as appropriate to improve health outcomes”. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing essentials of the master’s-prepared nursing education include IC as one of the expectations within all MSN educational programs. Collaboration is key to ensure that outcomes are met.

The art of nursing has been in existence since the beginning of time. People have been caring for the ill and injured for as long as history has been recorded. In many early societies, no formal education for nurses was available, so the caregiver role was allocated to women, medicine men, shamans, or as predetermined by culture. The nursing profession was not identified as an organized career until the mid-1800s when Florence Nightingale cared for the sick and injured during the Crimean War. Since inception of nursing as a profession, several others have been instrumental in the development and evolvement of the role and have impacted how nursing is practiced today. This chapter identifies the founders of nursing, distinguish organizations maintaining the history of nursing, and discusses how the history of nursing influences modern nursing practice.

Changes in technology and automation influence the way nursing faculty teach nursing. Institutions of higher education prepare students for lifelong learning by including soft skills, such as critical thinking and communication, in the curriculum. The role of faculty members is to use technology in teaching to create authentic, problem-based learning strategies. Including the instructional designer in designing courses that include the technology-based strategies is a priority. Matthew Lynch (2018) describes expected changes in technology that impact online learning. The changes in technology include: mobile learning, project-based learning, learning analytics and visualization software, redesign in online classrooms, and movement to blended learning environments. Adaptive learning technology will employ software that adapts to the learners’ learning needs and styles. The chapter briefly discusses the role of the faculty educator and the expectations of the future faculty educator.

College financial aid is money given by the federal government and the institution to help students pay for the cost of their education. The first step to receiving financial aid is the completion of the infamous Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). The financial aid regulations state that when students earn their first undergraduate degree, they are considered independent students for financial aid purposes. This means that when such new “independent” students submit an FAFSA application, they should report only their—not the family’s—prior, prior year tax information. In addition, the FAFSA can identify nursing graduate students who may be eligible for institutional need-based loans, apart from federal subsidized or unsubsidized loans. Need-based grants or scholarships or unsubsidized loans reflect an assessment of the student’s ability to pay. The school awards these amounts based on information provided on the FAFSA or any additional supplemental forms required by the institution.

Veterans are a population with unique healthcare needs; however, only one third are enrolled in the specialized Veterans Affairs Health Care System (VAHCS; U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs [VA], 2018a). Therefore, it is vital to determine how to meet veterans’ distinctive needs in all care settings. This chapter includes an examination of veteran-centered clinical competencies for healthcare professionals and includes recommendations for educators—in both prelicensure nursing programs and staff education at healthcare facilities—to guide education material development. In addition, veteran-focused teaching strategies, learning activities, and clinical resources are provided to create new curricula and enhance existing ones. This will better prepare educators and healthcare professionals to provide culturally sensitive veteran-centered care. Suggestions for placement of possible learning activities in specific clinical courses are presented. Taken together, the veteran-centered competencies, teaching strategies, learning activities, and resources will improve care of veterans in all clinical settings.

Due to current and past wartime realities in our nation, nurses in all practice settings are challenged to meet the need for providing competent specialized healthcare services to military service members, veterans, and their families. Providing veteran-centered care in nursing education and clinical practice involves knowledge, expected behaviors, and application of essential competencies. As practice environments change over time, nursing faculty and clinical nurse educators are in a prime position to facilitate nurses’ educational needs. Nurse educators must identify, develop, and emphasize veteran-centered competencies to modify curricular needs, ensuring relevance to clinical practice outside of nursing silos (Harada et al., 2018), and assess the military and veteran cultural competence of their students (Meyer et al., 2015). This chapter presents various topics within the realm of professional competency, along with strategies educators can utilize to enhance student competency at all degree levels.

Decades of wars contribute to veterans with a wide range of visible and invisible wounds, temporary and permanent, which can influence their health over a lifetime. The health of veterans is a growing public health concern, yet nursing education is still in the early stages of integrating military/veteran-related content into already content heavy curricula. Nurses at the bedside lack adequate knowledge to care for this population in a culturally sensitive manner. This chapter provides a brief overview of veterans in today’s society, the major health issues challenging military service members, veterans and their families, and national initiatives that have been the catalyst for change to meet this population’s needs. It also addresses the current status of veteran-related content in nursing education, why it is important, and where we need to go moving forward to ensure nurses are educated to deliver culturally sensitive, patient-centered care to this population.

Skills acquisition is an important component of nursing education, beginning early in the curriculum and continuing throughout the nursing program. Learning laboratories provide a safe environment for initial psychomotor skills acquisition while offering opportunities to socialize students into the professional role of a nurse. The challenge for nurse educators in the laboratory is to assist students in understanding that acquisition of psychomotor skills is foundational to nursing practice but is only one component of being a nurse. Educators in laboratory settings are charged with encouraging the development of a strong foundation of learning so students can advance in their understanding of the depth and breadth of the art of nursing. This chapter provides practical strategies embedded in educational pedagogy of skills acquisition. It helps the reader to describe process of skill development and implications for teaching in learning laboratories and analyze the role of the learning laboratory in nursing programs.

Ethics is a topic that is important to revisit at each level of a nurse’s education. The role of ethics in nursing must be understood to completely understand the role of nursing in research. To frame the role of ethics in nursing research, it is important to discuss examples of ethics in nursing and how the current experiences apply to ethics in the context of nursing research. This chapter covers an overview of ethics in nursing, and discusses the role of ethics in nursing research. The terms that one needs to know as the basic backbones of ethics are beneficence, justice, respect for persons, and nonmaleficence. These are the terms one learned in Ethics, but when related to the professional role of the master’s-prepared nurse, they become real-world tools used to make decisions. These terms are defined and discussed in the context of their presence in nursing research ethics.

This chapter helps the learner to discuss the history of nursing education; compare and contrast the three major roles of the nurse educator; explain the three roles of an academic nurse educator; examine how a nurse educator can become nationally certificated; and distinguish the benefits and challenges of being a nurse educator. There are three major roles for a nurse educator: community educator, staff educator, and academic educator. Each role has a slightly different focus but uses the same basic skills taught in educator courses. Nursing education is an excellent role to consider when earning your master’s degree. It provides flexibility in your work schedule and allows one to be at the top of the required knowledge in your area of expertise. As a nurse educator, one can impact many lives directly or indirectly.

Academia should be considered as the foundation of the movement to end bullying, but it is often where bullying in nursing begins. Academia, like all areas of nursing, has long-standing traditions and expectations. This chapter enables the reader to list the root causes of bullying in nursing education and the bullying behaviors found in nursing education. It also helps the reader to list the bullying behaviors demonstrated by the student nurse and the ways bullying nursing education can be decreased. The chapter describes how nursing staff may be stressed by the presence of nurse educators on the nursing unit. The student may be bullied by various professionals, but nursing faculty and nursing staff are also subjected to inappropriate student behaviors as well. Education, bullying recognition strategies, and zero-tolerance policies will help to eliminate the nurse who becomes a bully.

Competency-based education (CBE) is becoming the new curriculum model in healthcare for several reasons: Need for greater practitioner accountability; Increased social expectations for quality care; and Need for educational systems that can readily adapt to change. This chapter delves into the specifics of revising or developing a nursing curriculum using a CBE model. Curriculum revision or development must consider many variables including the educational mission, the competencies identified as needed, the framework, and the constraints encountered in traditional educational systems. The chapter discusses the development of CBE curricula. It compares CBE to traditional curriculum models and helps the reader to identify leadership attributes needed to develop or revise curricula. A curriculum framework organizes content and competencies. Milestones are built in to ensure logical succession of competency achievement. Assessment and evaluation of competency achievement is completed along the way to ensure student success in reaching program outcomes.

A major challenge for nursing faculty has been, and continues to be, to engage in more scholarly writing when they have had limited formal training and experience with scholarly writing. A second challenge with transitioning nursing education into universities is that a significant proportion of nursing faculty members are dedicated (almost exclusively) to educating students on clinical nursing skills. This chapter explores the reasons why nurses often do not write well, which contributes to some nurses “hating” to write or choosing not to write at all. It then explores the reasons why nurses should write. Finally, the chapter explains the structure of scholarly writing and uses an example of a class assignment to demonstrate how to develop the structure of a scholarly manuscript. The chapter also includes some general tips to help you structure a piece of writing for ease of comprehension and maximum effect.

The role of the nurse educator includes more than teaching, assessing learning, and developing courses: it also includes scholarship and contributing to the development of nursing education as a science. Research in nursing education is essential, but scholarship is more than studies about students, teachers, and programs: scholarship can be conceptualized broadly as inquiry about learning and teaching. Scholars in nursing education question and search for new ideas; they debate and think beyond how it has ℌalways been doneℍ. For the teacher’s work to be considered as scholarship, it needs to be public, peer-reviewed and critiqued, and shared with others. This chapter examines scholarship in nursing education and developing one’s role as a scholar. Because of the importance of dissemination to scholarship, the chapter describes the process of writing for publication and other strategies for dissemination. It discusses the development of a teaching portfolio to document teaching excellence and scholarship.

This chapter provides a brief description of paying for college in a tax-efficient manner. The American Opportunity Credit is a nonrefundable credit against an individual’s federal income tax liability. The Lifetime Learning Credit is a nonrefundable credit against the individual’s federal income tax liability. Several thousand companies offer tuition assistance programs as a fringe benefit for employees who want to further their college studies. Employers are not required to offer educational assistance to employees. When planning for college, one must be aware of the many income tax strategies available to increase the amount of family funds for future college costs. Taxpayers who own a business can save taxes by shifting income to their children. Income shifting from parents or grandparents, to children or grandchildren, to take advantage of the child’s tax capacity is accomplished by putting income-producing assets in the children’s or grandchildren’s name.

Deaning and directing takes stamina, grit, and resiliency. This chapter focuses on common challenges faced by nursing deans/directors. Some of these challenges are not unique to nursing education; however, most are definitely “character-building” moments for nurses. New deans referred to challenges such as long work hours; lack of mentorship; inability to talk freely with faculty following transition to the leadership position; difficulty achieving desired connections with peers, especially those from other disciplines; budgets; accreditation requirements; toxic work environments; gender bias; students’ lack of respect for hierarchy; and faculty and clinical facility shortages. Many challenges exist for today’s nursing deans and directors, especially with the current push to expand and extend opportunities for higher education. Yet, garnering resources for faculty, staff, and students and creating a risk-tolerant environment that nurtures innovative solutions for complex issues and challenges can be rewarding and help deans/directors to survive and thrive.

This chapter presents three case studies that illustrate common scenarios in which bullying occurs, along with the description of bullying behavior demonstrated, probable cause, victim intervention, potential witness intervention, and critical thinking moment. The first case study is about Margo who is a preceptor and enjoys when nursing students come to her cardiac unit. The second case study is about Michael, a second-year student at a university, and the third case study is about Ms. Emily Sanchez who worked as a clinical instructor at a local community college. The chapter lists the interventions including witness interventions to resist bullying in nursing education. It enables the reader to list the probable causes of a student nurse bullying a faculty member and the probable causes of faculty bullying fellow faculty, and to identify the critical thinking moments in a bullying incident.

This chapter presents two case studies that explore three scenarios in which bullying is perpetrated by those in nursing administration, along with the description of bullying behavior demonstrated, probable cause, victim intervention, potential witness intervention, and critical thinking moment. The first case study is about Melissa who had a master’s degree and was staff development instructor and infection control specialist at a large subacute facility. The second case study is about Kathy who was an ADON at a long-term care facility. The chapter allows reader to list bullying behaviors evident in nursing education and to list victim interventions and witness interventions for the nurse educator who is bullied. It also helps the reader to list the probable causes of a student nurse bullying a faculty member and the probable causes of faculty bullying fellow faculty. The chapter helps identifying the critical thinking moment in a bullying incident.

Simulation as a teaching strategy was an effective approach to improve teamwork, active learning, problem-solving, satisfaction level, and self-confidence during disaster nursing training. Nurse educators should provide disaster training programs for nursing undergraduates to prepare them for an active role in disaster response. The teaching strategy described in this chapter involves using case scenario and tabletop exercise in teaching field triage in disaster nursing. The case scenario is a “fictional” emergency or disaster management situation, which can be based on actual or potential events. The tabletop exercise is an educational tool intended to provide students/learners an opportunity to apply knowledge about preparedness and potential disaster situations through formal discussion of the described scenario. The use of case scenario and tabletop exercise allows students to practice their skills in doing the task, such as field triage, without compromising the emergency or disaster situation.

Advanced practice registered nursing is an exciting career choice with many opportunities and challenges. Advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) are at the forefront of the rapidly changing healthcare system, filling myriad roles in organizations where they provide cost-effective, high-quality care. The term “advanced practice registered nurse” became the common umbrella term used to designate four specialty roles of nurses with formal post baccalaureate preparation: certified nurse midwives, certified registered nurse anesthetists, nurse practitioners, and clinical nurse specialists. A number of factors led nursing leaders to delineate these four APRN roles. A critical factor was obtaining legal status to be directly reimbursed for their nursing services. APRNs are educated within master’s or doctoral nursing programs and play key roles in providing culturally competent care. They assume leadership in developing new practice sites and innovative systems of care to enhance healthcare outcomes.

Nursing students must develop clinical skills in order to ensure that they are able to provide safe, competent, and evidence-based care to their patients, but acquiring effective teamwork skills may prove to be of equal importance. Effective, meaningful, and timely communication among healthcare providers may be seen as the driving force behind safer patient care. Multiple studies suggest that exercises for improving communication and teamwork should be included regularly as an integral educational approach in nursing education. Nurse educators are provided with strategies to help create a more dynamic learning environment in the large classroom. Educators will learn how to develop and launch high-performance student teams using team-based learning principles and online peer evaluations. The use of novel professional social media platforms such as LinkedIn can broaden both the student and educator perspectives on academic progression and potential for career advancement.

This chapter describes what an interprofessional team is and discusses the characteristics that make a team most effective. It describes the importance of recognizing the patient and family as an integral part of the interprofessional team and how the role of the team is not to dictate care but instead support the patient and family in achieving an optimal patient outcome. It then presents strategies for how best to include the patient as a partner in care. The chapter highlights resources that can be utilized as well as strategies that individuals and institutions can implement to create an environment where effective interprofessional communication supports patient safety and improves the overall quality of the care provided to patients. Lastly, it discusses how informatics and the many resources available through the internet contribute to effective teamwork by making information readily available so that team members can exchange ideas to solve problems.

Understanding learners is an important component of quality teaching. Ideally, nurse educators use a learner-centered approach when preparing lessons to teach; during class and when teaching in simulation, clinical practice, and other settings; and for assessment. Nurse educators need an understanding of the varied attributes of students, which can affect their learning process and outcomes; students’ culture and ethnicity; and their learning style preferences, the way in which students approach a particular learning situation. Students’ age, gender, motivation, abilities, and self-regulation are other characteristics that can influence their learning and our teaching approaches. This chapter examines varied attributes of nursing students, learner differences that can influence what and how we teach, and multiple strategies nurse educators can use that take into consideration these different characteristics. Understanding the learner encourages growth and learning by all and creates an open and welcoming environment to learn.

The transition from bedside to classroom is rarely easy. Most novice nurse educators assume an academic or professional development role without formal preparation in nursing education. While they may be expert clinicians, they often lack the foundational knowledge necessary for success in the nurse educator role today. This chapter examines barriers and facilitators to the transition process and provides resources to help novice educators gain competence in their new role. It helps the reader to identify elements of a new faculty orientation program that assist in the transition from clinician to educator and to identify resources available for clinicians making the transition from clinician to educator. Although the transition from clinician to educator presents many challenges, there are several strategies that may facilitate this transition in the academic or professional development setting. These strategies include formal, structured orientation, effective mentoring, and development of instructional skills.

Nurse educators play a key role in the teaching and learning process. They not only need to be effective teachers in the classroom and online but also in the nursing skills laboratory, simulation, in the clinical area, and during student advising. Understanding how students learn in each of these settings is paramount to good instruction. Nurse educators need to create instruction that is based on the best evidence of teaching and learning. Theory can both guide the creation of learning activities as well as assist in the reflection of the teaching process. Examining the theories of learning is essential to providing quality education. This chapter examines selected learning theories and teaching strategies based on those theories. The major theories of learning can be categorized as: Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning, Social Cognitivism, Social Learning Theory, Situated Learning Theory, Humanism, Constructivism, Brain-Based Learning, and Technology-Mediated Learning.

This chapter explores the use of virtual simulation from an administrative perspective. Nursing education is moving from PowerPoint lectures and technical skills laboratories on static body parts to engaged learning with high-fidelity simulation, learner-centered experiential teaching, and simulated and standardized patients, all of which help students learn to think, act, and reflect like nurses. Virtual simulation is one way of teaching and learning professional skills, assisting with the integration of acquired scientific knowledge, theory, and practice to promote clinical reasoning and critical thinking. The chapter explores ways in which administrators can support faculty and students while enhancing the educational experience at their institutions. It is important that administrators manage faculty and student expectations and needs while assessing university support for a variety of options; they must address the challenges and opportunities, and explore ideas for leveraging support by developing partnerships.

This chapter describes the influence nursing orientation programs have on the successful transition of new nurses into the practice setting. It describes the role/orientation and how transition to practice programs are integral in meeting the everchanging demands of contemporary nursing practice. It highlights the influence and important role of mentors and preceptors. The chapter includes a discussion of impact regulatory agencies have on the nursing profession, recognizing that nurses play a vital role in patient outcomes. It includes a review of current nursing-sensitive indicators that provide nurses with a blueprint for delivery of high-quality nursing care and achieving goal of preventing patient harm. The chapter examines integration of quality and safety competencies into nursing orientation programs, and the impact this can have on the perceptions of newly hired registered nurses. Lastly, it includes a discussion about nursing professional development and leadership focusing on role these have in quality and safety.

Higher education provides a totally different environment for these students than did high school: Not only does the student have more autonomy and less oversight, but also the duties owed to the student by the institution are far fewer. Unfortunately, there are not always red flags (e.g., harassment, anger management issues) to predict violent behavior; therefore, a comprehensive university approach that combines education, sound code of conduct policies, vigilance, and clear reporting mechanisms are in the best interest of the college community. Harassment and other violent behavior compromise the sense of community to which most universities aspire. Faculty, students, and staff all desire a safe campus environment. Individuals want to go about their daily lives without fear of physical, emotional, or psychological harm. Personal safety is a basic human need that must be upheld; therefore, violence prevention and safety promotion should be seen as a broader mission of all universities.

Effective clinical teaching and learning are influenced by a number of factors. Clinical teaching is performed by a faculty within a curriculum that is planned and offered in response to professional, societal, environmental, and educational expectations and demands, using available human, intellectual, physical, and financial resources the context of the curriculum. However, considering that educational context is not enough for clinical teachers, they must also consider the health care context so that they are adequately preparing qualified nurses to be capable of responding to the needs and challenges of a rapidly changing health care environment. Clinical teaching is also impacted by trends and issues beyond the clinical setting and the nursing program. The practice of clinical teaching differs somewhat from program to program. It is not possible to recommend a set of clinical teaching strategies that will be equally effective in every nursing education program.

The testing environment has become extremely complex. Nursing faculty has a duty to develop and administer psychometrically sound examinations in an environment that values academic integrity. This chapter provides an overview of some guidance on test protocols or students which are different from test administration policies for faculty. It includes a short primer on basic psychometrics in test scoring. The chapter also provides a background on use of the Standardized Patient (SP) Testing, an overview of some of the current controversies in test taking, and finally a very lengthy legal case study. To achieve an optimal testing environment, faculty will require significant development on test construction and training on item analysis to write and evaluate test items. Knowledge of testing and measurement coupled with a strong ethical compass are important for a trustworthy testing environment and educational system.

Before implementing a new nursing educational program or making major changes to an existing program, several approval requirements must be met. Knowledge about the approval processes and specific program requirements will assist in program development and implementation. In this chapter, the reader will learn to consider when seeking approval for a new nursing program or major revisions to an existing program within an organization, from state regulatory agencies, and from a national accrediting agency. Educational institutions usually have in place a defined process for approving new programs. In addition to new nursing program approval from the appropriate State Board of Nursing, there may also be a state education board or commission that must approve all new programs. Many educators consider national accreditation desirable for nursing programs. Finally, the chapter presents examples of nursing program approval processes.

This chapter discusses the changes that are being made to the National Council Licensing Examination for Registered Nurses (NCLEX-RN^®) licensing exam. Specifically, it discusses the clinical reasoning model in relation to cognitive information processing that will be needed to be successful. Related issues of cognitive load and overtaxed short-term store (STS) are included. A major change is the type of reasoning that will be required within the actual test items. The chapter discusses Peirce’s (1931–1958) abductive reasoning as a way to understand those changes. In addition to the changes in reasoning, the focus of probabilistic reasoning will also need to be understood by candidates. Finally, the chapter provides a discussion about the changes that will need to occur in the classroom setting to prepare students for clinical reasoning on the test and to be clinically ready day one, as well as the legal and ethical implications.

The policy landscape for oncology advanced practice nurses (APRNs) is largely shaped by a focus on health equity and care across the cancer continuum. The 21st Century Cures Act, which included the Beau Biden Cancer Moonshot, continues to influence cancer research and clinical care through funding allocated through 2023. From identifying patients for clinical trials to the management of side effects from new and emerging treatments, the role of oncology APRNs will be influenced now and in the future as a result of this significant policy-driven initiative. This chapter presents an overview of the role of oncology APRNs and how their education, training, practice and prescribing are influenced by health policy. Specific emphasis is given to the influence of health policy on oncology APRNs’ prescriptive authority and their unique role in cancer prevention and survivorship. Oncology-related policy initiatives since 2016 are highlighted with implications for current and future APRN practice.

The term, educational outcomes, is used to distinguish between nursing program outcomes and those course outcomes resulting from the teaching/learning process. Educational outcomes are referred to using a variety of terms, such as, performance outcomes, competency outcomes, or objectives. In this chapter, the reader will learn why it is important to have well-articulated educational outcomes for the nursing program. The reader will also learn how to develop educational outcomes that are congruent with the nursing program philosophy and organizing framework. Educational outcomes articulate and communicate what graduates must know and be able to do as they exit the nursing program. Educational outcomes are the criteria used to select materials, outline content, develop instructional procedures, and prepare tests and examinations. Educational outcomes must be learner rather than educator based. The actual number of educational outcomes will vary from nursing program to nursing program.

Advanced practice nursing is on a rapidly unfolding evolutionary path globally, dictated by need, vision, and opportunity. The need for cost effective quality healthcare providers is universal. Technology, communications, and new educational methods have allowed global connections. To prepare for a global experience, the advanced practice registered nurse (APRN)/advanced practice nurse (APN) should understand political, social, economic, and healthcare trends and, megatrends. This chapter presents the agencies involved in the global APRN/APN experience. International advanced practice nursing partnerships have become a popular method of exchanging nursing knowledge in that they provide a forum for access to international practice experiences and a forum for research in international healthcare issues. Pressing global healthcare needs and proven APRN/APN track records in healthcare delivery, education, and research demonstrate this is a time for APRNs/APNs to collaborate with colleagues and other medical professionals to improve health for individuals and communities everywhere.

Education and lifelong learning are at the heart of nursing. When nurses are taught well, education can impact the knowledge, attitudes, and skills of learners. Education is the key to help nurses develop LGBTQ cultural competency, improve the overall care for LGBTQ patients, and lastly, improve general health equity for LGBTQ people. This chapter will explore how nurses can integrate and develop LGBTQ curriculum or learnings into their programs and institutions.

Population health is defined by the Centers for Disease Control as an interdisciplinary, tailored approach that connects health departments, health care institutions, and policy to achieve positive health outcomes locally. Population health was developed to ensure a more integrated delivery system to improve health of a specified population and is different from public health. Assuming a variety of roles within health care systems and their communities, nurses utilize population health knowledge and skills to realize the goal of creating a culture of health and wellness, rather than concentrating on treating illness. A focus on population health requires nurses to work closely with interprofessional teams to improve health outcomes. The Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) competencies and population health competencies are important to the role of nurse in improving health outcomes. This chapter assists the reader to explain registered nurses' role in population health related to the QSEN competencies.

When a student or nurse is suspected of substance abuse, it is suggested that faculty or fellow nurses and peers confront the student or nurse by taking individual aside and privately addressing their concern about behavior. Except in extreme situations, it is likely that an appropriate response is for individual and the university to enter into an agreement by which individual agrees immediately to cease the improper conduct and begin addictions treatment with the goal to return to work/school and maintain client safety. Although a report of the transgression may be required at the time of the conduct, the state board of nursing will not become involved until the student graduates and a decision is needed about whether to issue an initial registered professional nursing license. Academic institutions need drug and alcohol use and screening and monitoring policies firmly in place to deal effectively with this persistent social problem.

Simulation-based education is increasingly being used and accepted for acquiring both technical and nontechnical skills. Simulation improves confidence, communication skills, critical thinking, and clinical decision-making, and builds on knowledge surrounding care of the patient, efficiency in the identification of clinical worsening of patients, development of technical skills, and teamwork. The intensive care unit requires advanced skills for critically ill patients, rendering it challenging for students, professors, and health professionals. Better patient outcomes are brought about by prompt and appropriate decisions in critical care settings. The use of simulation as an educational tool has become increasingly prevalent in nursing education utilizing a variety of simulators. The primary goal of this teaching strategy is to enable sound clinical decision-making by students through case scenarios and simulation using high-fidelity mannequins in critical care nursing.

Clinical teaching and learning take place in a social context. Teachers, students, staff members, and patients have roles, rights, and responsibilities that are sometimes in conflict. These conflicts create legal and ethical dilemmas for clinical teachers. This chapter discusses some ethical and legal issues related to clinical teaching and offers suggestions for preventing, minimizing, and managing these difficult situations. Online social networking is a useful and popular means of communication and collaboration, but nursing faculty members and students may encounter ethical and legal consequences of social media misuse. The American Nurses Association (ANA) Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretative Statements emphasizes the obligation of nurses to act within the professional role and to maintain role boundaries in relationships with patients. Ethical standards such as respect for human dignity, autonomy, and freedom; beneficence; justice; veracity; privacy; and fidelity are important considerations for all parties involved in clinical teaching and learning.

Every profession has core values and excellences that provide an ethical code, a reference point for how nurses go about acting professionally. In nursing education, the learning of this content may be relegated to the clinical practicum experiences, and little time is spent on seminar discussions; thus, it often seems an obscure aspect of the curriculum. Introductory courses in nursing provide an overview of what professional practice is, what their code of ethics means, and how nurses are supposed to function. They usually outline the values and excellences held at the core of their being and becoming nurses. Nurses are still predominantly socialized during basic education and in the workplace to be subordinate to others. Compassion is unquestionably at the heart of the mission of the nursing profession. It is a virtue and an excellence that makes all the difference.

Nursing practice requires developing clinical judgment and higher level thinking skills, psychomotor and technological skills, attitudes and values, and other competencies for care of patients across settings. Through clinical evaluation, the teacher arrives at judgments about students’ competencies their performance in practice. After establishing a framework for evaluating students in clinical practice and exploring one’s own values, attitudes, and biases influencing evaluation, the teacher identifies a variety of methods for collecting data on student performance. Clinical evaluation methods are strategies for assessing learning outcomes in clinical practice. Some evaluation methods are most appropriate for use by faculty members/preceptors who are on-site with students and observe their performance; other evaluation methods assess students’ knowledge, cognitive skills, and other competencies but do not involve direct observation of their performance. This chapter describes process of clinical evaluation in nursing, methods for evaluating clinical performance, and how to grade students in clinical courses.

The integration of a virtual learning environment (VLE) for graduate virtual world practicum (VWP) students has been a success based on faculty, mentor, and student feedback. Second Life helped provide students with the opportunity to complete their practicum without any delays, which would have been the case of a lack of qualified mentors or appropriate on-ground practicum placement sites. Student, mentor, and faculty feedback on this option for students completing their practicum has been positive. Mentors working in SL have been instrumental in support of this option for students and dedicated their area through the development of scenarios and other aspects of the VWP component. VWP students enact their future role as nurse executives and experience more than real world practicum (RWP) students. This chapter highlights some aspects of the faculty’s role in the integration of this virtual simulation into a nursing practicum course, specifically in the executive specialty.

Despite a rapidly changing state-level context for legal use of marijuana and the extensive growth of comprehensive medical marijuana programs across 33 states and several U.S. territories, marijuana remains classified as a Schedule I, illegal substance, defined as having no therapeutic use. Higher education regulation, as outlined in Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act Amendments of 1989, places those institutions of higher education located in states that legalized marijuana at risk of losing eligibility for an array of federal funds, should their policies regarding marijuana be harmonized with state rather than federal law. However, this guidance does not extend to students currently in academic nursing programs, which remain subject to the higher education law restrictions. The interplay of these creates unavoidable ethical and personal rights considerations that nursing education leaders will need to sort through. Navigating these in an evolving legal landscape is challenging for even the most law-savvy nurse educator.

A test is a measurement instrument designed to assess learners’ knowledge and cognitive abilities. Teachers use test results to make important educational judgments and decisions that affect learners, teachers, patients, future employers, and the educational program. Like every measurement instrument, a test must produce relevant and consistent results to form the basis for sound inferences about what learners know and can do. Good planning, careful test construction, proper administration, accurate scoring, and sound interpretation of scores are essential for producing useful test results. This chapter presents a brief discussion of assessment concepts that influence the quality of test results, and then describes the process of planning, constructing, administering, scoring, and analyzing tests. It presents guidelines for writing true–false, matching, multiple-choice, multiple-response, short answer, and essay items, and context-dependent item sets. The chapter helps the reader to apply specific rules for writing test items of various types.

This chapter discusses the value of enhancing the leadership skills of nurses at the bedside, on the frontline of patient care. Leadership and management theories to transform nursing practice will be applied to demonstrate how they can improve care. It describes the roles and education of nurses leading and managing in hospital health care settings, as will motivations for bedside nurses on the frontline of patient care to lead and manage quality improvement. The chapter introduces readers to the organizational structure of a hospital health care setting and explains how nursing leadership and management influence the culture of an organization. Professional nurses need to engage in a life-long endeavor of professional development and continuing education. The chapter provides direction for foundational nursing leadership and management skills that enhance safe, high-quality patient care in all areas of nursing from bedside care to crisis management.

The future of healthcare and information technology (IT) integration will continue to impact practice and professional education as we move into the 21st century with sophisticated networks of information sharing. This chapter analyzes the implications of healthcare IT project and project management to nursing education and practice. The authors recognize that in today’s high-tech climate, it is expected nurses will have IT skills. The authors focus on project management skills as a subset of these expected competencies within nursing informatics (NI) learning and educational processes. Recruiting health IT-specialists, instructional designers, and other disciplines to cover health-IT business courses such as project management or partnering with other academic units through interprofessional education can lead to successful nursing curriculum programs. This will allow faculty to refine and standardize course content inclusive of nonclinical students to foster idea-generation and creativity benefiting NI students, practicing clinicians, and the workforce.

It is important that we explore ways to provide associations between recreation and education. Serious games (SGs) offer the opportunity to have fun playing a game while learning. This chapter helps the reader to explore the use of serious games as a viable method for educating nurses and assess present resources that use serious games for education in the health professions. It also helps the reader to explain the steps to consider when developing serious games and appreciate the challenges and opportunities for the use of virtual gaming in nursing education. The chapter relates to the faculty aspect of the Faculty Administrators Students Technology Strategic Integration Model^©. Faculty must be able to assume the beginner role of technology user, move to the experienced roles of designer/developer and innovator, and then move into the expert roles of researcher and pedagogy synthesizer.

This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of advanced practice registered nursing education funding and residency program and explains how both former and current U.S. events have impacted financial support. Beginning with a historical perspective, it outlines how nurses were established as essential to America’s health care before describing Congressional actions that established consistent funding for nursing education, notably the establishment of Title VIII Nursing Workforce Development programs. The chapter gives a detailed account of each of the Title VIII programs, the largest dedicated source of federal funding for nursing education, and a source of major federal funding for Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (APRNs). Finally, the chapter discusses 21st century health care reform and its impact on nursing education, including the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and highlights significant nursing leadership and advocacy efforts concerning funding for nursing education.

The concept of learning at a distance is defined in a variety of ways. At first glance it might be simply stated as the difference between learning on campus in a classroom or learning remotely. This chapter examines distance learning; clinical teaching in distance learning environments; developing partnerships with preceptors and clinical sites; and roles and responsibilities of the faculty member, preceptor, and student. Preceptors are important participants in clinical learning: they guide and evaluate student learning and performance and need to be well prepared for their role as educator. The faculty member also has responsibility for evaluating performance, and the chapter includes strategies for faculty to use such as site visits to clinical settings, on campus intensives, and virtual site visits. Schools of nursing need to continually evaluate the quality of the clinical practicum in distance education courses. It also includes discussion about preceptor and site evaluation.

This chapter addresses how and why faculty and staff should integrate and leverage game-based technology for their curricula. It also advocates anytime–anywhere learning as the corollary for mobile learning facilitated through smart technology devices and mobile applications as it relates to video games, mobile app–based games, and simulation-based learning. It discusses the process of educational game development specific to clinical education and provides an approach for integration of such technology into the curricula, as well as introduces readers to the pedagogy supporting such technology. Definitions provided in this chapter and terms defined in the glossary are crafted through the lens of educational design to assist and inform teachers or faculty members wishing to integrate game-based learning solutions into their curricula. The chapter also provides a discussion on the merits of faculty support and professional development needed to promote successful integration of game-based mobile technology into the curriculum.

This chapter focuses on the science and process of quality improvement (QI). For nurses to gain the necessary knowledge, skills, and attitudes to continuously improve health care quality, safety, and systems used to deliver health care, the Quality and Safety Education for Nurses project defines QI as “Use data to monitor the outcomes of care processes and use improvement methods to design and test changes to continuously improve the quality and safety of health care systems”. The chapter includes defining data and commonly used descriptive statistics applied in QI activities. It explores the types and uses of data for QI including how data are displayed for analysis and how data are analyzed to identify both the need for improvement and if improvement occurred. When indicated, interprofessional teams may conduct QI activities. The teams have a variety of improvement tools and methods they can employ.

Practice experiences that occur in the clinical learning environment provide critical opportunities for nursing students to apply theory to practice and demonstrate the essential skills of clinical judgement and clinical reasoning. Advances in technology have permeated the healthcare environment resulting in the need for clinical nurse educators to rethink current practices to best prepare students to meet their future role demands. A recent national survey of nursing education programs found that technology is currently being used for measuring learning outcomes and redesigning learning spaces. Incorporating pedagogical technologies in clinical education should be an ongoing process that reflects best practices while also connecting students to emerging technology that can advance health care. This chapter explores technologies for clinical teaching, including simulated electronic health records, telepresence, telehealth, electronic escape rooms, and other technology-related approaches. It also includes virtual clinical learning experiences and how educators responded with technology use to COVID-19.

One of the most important responsibilities of clinical educator is selecting teaching methods and crafting clinical assignments that are related to competencies to be developed, appropriate to students’ levels of knowledge and skill, and challenging enough to motivate learning. Although having students provide comprehensive nursing care to one/more patients is a typical clinical assignment, it is only one of many possible assignments and not always the most appropriate choice. This chapter presents clinical teaching methods clinical assignments and options for these assignments (skill versus total care focus, student patient ratio options, management activities, guided observation, and service learning); discussion; clinical conferences; and written assignments. It provides a framework for planning clinical assignments for learners. Many types of written assignments can be used for clinical learning. The chapter presents concept map, short written assignment, nursing care plan, evidence-based practice papers, reflective journals, group writing, and e-portfolio.

This chapter helps the reader to identify the process for designing and creating virtual gaming simulations (VGS) in nursing education, assess key decision points associated with game designs, and compare and contrast different forms of virtual environments and tools that inform game design. It provides an overview of virtual learning environments and tools, followed by a discussion of two VGS exemplars related to a mental health assessment and prescription of the controlled substances. The former is focused on baccalaureate students, whereas the latter is focused on advanced practice nurses. These exemplars examine challenges encountered, resolutions considered, and lessons learned in VGS design. The chapter applies the Faculty Administrators Students Technology Strategic Integration Model^© model as a method to reflect on and critique the groups’ processes for making design decisions and to frame a discussion of the lessons learned in the process.

This chapter provides an overview of the key concepts, drivers, and strategies for improving patient safety and quality care, setting the stage as the foundation of nursing work. It discusses National and international initiatives to improve health care systems. It then analyzes nurses’ role in quality and safety along with the origins and development of the Quality and Safety Education for Nurses competencies as a catalyst for improvement in nursing education. The chapter explores the transformation of nursing education from task-oriented instruction to the development of a new identity for nurses that demonstrates knowledge, skills, and attitudes that emphasize quality and safety in patient care. The chapter briefs the role of nurses as health care leaders being champions for change. Nurses are key to ensuring and improving quality of care and safety for patients and families, as well as for organizations in which they work.