Role of the Nurse Educator

As the profession of nursing becomes increasingly complex, nurses assume greater responsibilities in the areas of clinical practice, education, and the advance of nursing science (Krouse and Holloran, 1992, pp. 62-64). A changing face of the broader society drives change in nursing (Loveridge, 1991, pp. 46-47). In turn, the changes in both society and the nursing profession demand innovation in nursing education.

In the future, administrators of nursing education programs will be required to be more creative in the areas of staff development and motivation, as more complex tasks become a part of increasing workloads in the face of a shortage of professional nursing educators (Bachman, Kichens, Halley, and Ellison, 1992, pp. 29-33). Nursing education administrators will be required to address the task and personnel problems, while simultaneously wrestling with challenges to the professional autonomy of nursing (Smeltzer and Vicario, 1988, pp. 68-71).

The nursing education administrator of the future must be prepared to deal with such problems as improved work design, staff development, and exercising professional autonomy while, at the same time, assuming greater responsibilities for the conduct of research to advance the profession (Tonges, 1992, pp. 27-32). Staff development for nursing education institutions in the future, however, cannot deal only with competency in practice and skill in research, but

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ciety of which the profession is a part. It is the subjective realm which underlies and give meaning to nursing actions. The components include cognitive orientations, affective orientations and evaluative orientations, or, in other words, judgments and opinions about factors involved in the process of nursing. One role of the nurse educator is to imbue nursing students with the culture of professional nursing. The role of the nursing educator must also encompass the practice of preceptorship. A preceptor acts as an agent to assist other employees or students to adjust to a new role (Deane and Campbell, 1985, p. 144). Thus, a preceptorship program in nursing is one in which persons newly graduated from or soon to be graduated from nursing education programs are provided guidance by an experienced staff nurse in the transition from student nurse to practicing nurse (Carpenito and Duespohl, 1985, p. 111). "Nursing students need experience that will provide for their greatest growth, experiences as close as possible to the real situations in which they will work after graduation" (Meisenheiner, 1979, p. 41). If nurses "remained in their educational programs until that had obtained enough knowledge and ski
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1863
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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