Role of Nurse Educator and Community Nurse Educator - Essay Example

Role of Nurse Educator and Community Nurse Educator Nurse Educator “Nurse educators blend a love of teaching and learning with both advanced clinical practice and leadership in a variety of settings and roles” (http://www.umassmed.edu). This is the core of the role of nurse educator. Nurse educators are registered nurses who have advanced education, including advanced clinical training in a health care specialty. This advanced education enables them to serve in several roles, which range from adjunct (part-time) clinical faculty to dean of a college of nursing.

Having advanced clinical training, nurse educators combine their clinical abilities with responsibilities related to: designing curricula, developing courses/programs of study, teaching and guiding learners, evaluating the learning process and documenting the outcomes of the educational process (Wikipedia, n.d.). These professionals, who work in the classroom and the practice setting (hospital setting or community setting), are responsible for preparing and mentoring current and future generations of nurses.

Nurse educators play a pivotal role in strengthening the nursing workforce, serving as role models and providing the leadership needed to implement evidence-based practice. Such tasks call for “tripartite” role of teaching, scholarship and collaboration (SREB, 2002) as shown in figure 1. As a teacher, nurse educator assumes leadership in curriculum, instruction and evaluation as already described above. The crucial part however of this role is the ability to model appropriate, desired behaviors of professional practice.

As discussed by SREB, in 1990, Boyer proposed a concept of distinct types of scholarship. Nurse educators are responsible for the scholarship of teaching, discovery, application and integration. The scholar role requires “a nurse educator to design, collaborate and use research in nursing education and nursing practice; to seek opportunities for interdisciplinary and intradisciplinary research; to keep abreast of current knowledge; and to integrate research and scholarly findings into the practice of nursing education” (SREB, 2002).

Collaboration is also essential in the role of nurse educator. The nurse educator will use the knowledge and skills associated with collaboration to enact and enhance the best practices for the teacher and scholar roles. Community Nurse Educator Licensed Nurses whose work focuses on the community health concern are community nurse educators. They have been highly sophisticated, and trained for community health work. Community nurse educators are generalists, specialists, advanced practice, and nurse practitioner (Wikipedia, n.d.).

These roles include: educator of district nurses, researcher of district nursing and associated issues, facilitator of technology development and application, manager of district nurses and district nursing services, case manager; disseminator of information (e.g. publisher, editor, writer, systematic reviewer); counsellor regarding health - brokerage, advocacy, guidance (e.g. re gene therapy), officer for a district nursing professional organisation, lobbyist for district nursing; policy maker, policy informant or policy writer and leader of district nurses (Annells, 2006, Viterito and Teich, 2002).

References Nurse Educator http://www.umassmed.edu. Retrieved: March 2, 2008. SREB. 2002. Nurse Educator Competencies. N.W.Atlanta, GA . Retrieved from www.sreb.org last March 2, 2008 Wikipedia. (n.d.) Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurse_educator" last March 2, 2008. Community Nurse Educator Annells, M. ( 2006). District Nursing: modified by the era. Ppt. La Trobe University Viterito, A. and C. Teich. (2002). The nursing shortage and the role of community colleges in nurse education.

Nurse Education Research Brief. American Association of Community College. Washington DC. Wikipedia. (n. d.) Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurse_educator" last March 2, 2008.