Nurse Eduactor Strategic Plan
Nurse educator strategic plan
A strategic plan for a nurse educator
At present, I would say that my greatest strength as a nurse educator is my willingness to challenge myself in the pursuit of excellence. Within the next year, I will obtain my MSN with a specific concentration in education. Previously, I obtained certification as a Basic Life Support instructor (BLS). Also within the next year I intend to seek out certification in Advance Cardiac Live Support (ACLS) and Pediatric Life Support Instructor (PAL) with the intention of becoming both an ACLS and PALS instructor. These will enhance my capabilities as a nurse educator and provide greater specificity in the range and types of teaching I will be able to convey.
My second great strength as a nurse educator is the compassion I have for my patients and my genuine love of teaching. A nurse is always a 'teacher,' teaching patients and caregivers about how to empower themselves and take greater control over their own health. A nurse must make clear arcane and confusing medical issues for the layperson as well as teach new nurses and nursing students. With every additional course I take, I will broaden my 'teaching toolbox' of skills and competencies. Every patient is different, and the nursing educator must adapt his or her approach to every student and patient he or she deals with on a daily basis. A nurse educator is also always a learner, and my love of learning, I believe, is an additional strength of mine....
I have demonstrated this in my desire to seek out higher education and also my appreciation of the need to seek out knowledge of different types of teaching strategies and materials.
As well as obtaining formal certification within the year, over the course of the next three years, I will strive to educate myself by reading more about nursing education online, talking to nursing instructors to gain feedback about how to improve my teaching strategies, and becoming part of professional associations such as PNEG (the Professional Nurse Educator's Group), a virtual community of nursing educators, and NLN (the National League of Nursing), an organization devoted to promoting effective nursing education and the values of caring, integrity, diversity and excellence in nursing education (NLN, Official website, 2013) . Both groups offer 'real life' conferences and online teaching materials that may be helpful to me as well as access to resources such as job searches and professional networking.
Critical to the concept of professional networking is finding a mentor within the next two years, either in the form of one of my professors or a fellow nurse with similar goals and aspirations who has achieved her career objectives. In the past, I have received some on-the-job instruction but I do not have someone who I would consider a mentor and career advisor who can give me suggestions in terms of how I should redirect my energies to gain the full range of competencies I desire to secure. I also hope that I can act as…
