Healthcare is in a state of rapid change. Although practice environments have become more complex, educational delivery methods have remained stagnant. Innovative technologies provide opportunities to enhance nursing student learning and help nursing programs become more responsive to changes in the practice environment; however, obstacles may hinder successful implementation. With the increasing complexity of today’s health care environment, innovations in nursing curricula are necessary. This chapter explores some of the general challenges associated with the integration of innovative educational technologies, as well as some challenges unique to virtual simulation. It helps the reader to analyze the challenges of integrating educational technologies into nursing education associated with faculty, administrators, and students. It also helps the reader to examine practical and philosophical barriers related to technology integration and explores challenges unique to the adoption of virtual simulation.

Simulation has many advantages for nursing education, some of which include creating safe learning environments for students and reinforcing information learned in the classroom; it also has the advantage of being available in inclement weather as well as 24 hours a day for student access. Simulation in nursing is one of many methods used for teaching students. Teaching and learning in a virtual learning environment has many advantages for administrators, faculty, and students. One of the advantages includes the use of other disciplines to help create or participate in a virtual world learning experience. The virtual learning environment can be created to look similar to real communities, disaster areas, or homes, with avatars populating that environment. The advantage to using virtual reality, rather than a real-life experience, is that in real life, students could be immersed in an environment that could cause them harm.

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 addresses many requisite elements of the doctor of nursing practice (DNP) essentials and answers a variety of practice questions. In the world of always-competing priorities, ever-increasing complexity, and persistent uncertainty, how do organizations manage to stay on track, move forward, evolve, and even succeed? The chapter explores the answers to these and other questions that arise when observing organizations, both large and small. It discusses a sample organizational framework that allows nurse executives and managers to lead and stay on course. The chapter introduces the concepts of strategy, alignment, organizational planning, executing, and monitoring as well as provides sample tools for accomplishing these important leadership functions. It then looks at capital budgeting, projects feasibility, evaluation, and selection and provides a sample model for financial decision making. Although the concepts and tools contained herein are widely applicable to many industries, the chapter concentrates on nursing services and nursing education.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.