Describe the nurse educator’s role in leading the process of curriculum design or revision. How do program outcomes impact this process? How do nurse educators determine what to teach?

Topic 8 Discussion

The curriculum is the cornerstone of any program, with nursing included. The curriculum provides the direction of a program hence determining the competency of the program. Because the nursing curriculum guides nursing practice and determines patient care quality, a rigorous process is undertaken to design or revise the curriculum to ensure that appropriate content is used to train nurses. The efficiency of the curriculum requires the involvement of nurse educators in the process. Nurse educators are a vital component of nursing as they train nurses to acquire various skills and knowledge required for the nursing profession (Mthiyane & Habedi, 2018). They understand the scope of what learners should be taught and therefore take a leadership role in curriculum development or revision of the existing curriculum.

To effectively participate in the process, nurse educators function in a specific way. First, nurse educators must be competent and equipped with up-to-date information on nursing to enable them to take part in a rigorous and thoughtful process that defines nursing education (Coffey & White, 2019). Additionally, Nurse educators also determine the student learning outcomes and use the same to design the curriculum. Furthermore, they integrate the knowledge from theory, current nursing guidelines, and research to help in designing or revising the curriculum. Nurse educators use a fully designed curriculum to teach.

As much as the curriculum guides what should be taught, nurse educators have unique ways of determining what to teach. Nurse educators often work together in various dimensions to determine the contents to be taught as guided by the curriculum. Additionally, nurse educators use their clinical judgment to ensure learners integrate their classwork knowledge into clinical practice while maximizing the use of their psychomotor skills and content (Coffey & White, 2019). Essentially, nurse educators must understand the requirements of the curriculum to determine the appropriate content to teach learners.   

Reference

Coffey, J. S., & White, B. L. (2019). The clinical nurse educator role: A snapshot in time. Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, 50(5), 228–232. https://doi.org/10.3928/00220124-20190416-09

Mthiyane, G. N., & Habedi, D. S. (2018). The experiences of nurse educators in implementing evidence-based practice in teaching and learning. Health SA Gesondheid, 23, 1177. https://doi.org/10.4102/hsag.v23i0.1177