Pamela M. Ironside

Fostering Geriatrics in Associate Degree Nursing Education: An Assessment of Current Curricula and Clinical Experiences

The proportion of older adults in the population is rapidly increasing, and this trend is expected to continue. Because more than half of all new graduates eligible to enter the nursing workforce are prepared in associate degree (AD) programs, it is critical these new nurses are well prepared to care for older adults. This study examined how the care of older adults is currently taught in AD programs. Representatives from 531 AD programs responded to a survey providing information about the structure and content of AD curricula, the clinical sites and instructional resources used, and faculty expertise. Findings highlight opportunities for enhancing geriatric content and experiences in AD curricula through the creation of standards for geriatrics in AD nursing programs, the use of diverse clinical settings, and the creation of strategies that strengthen the focus on the care of older adults in acute care across the curriculum.

Narrative Pedagogy: Transforming Nursing Education Through 15 Years of Research in Nursing Education

AIM This article provides a review of current disciplinary understanding of Narrative Pedagogy and describes the implications for ongoing transformation in nursing education. BACKGROUND Narrative Pedagogy has been enacted and investigated by teachers around the world for more than 15 years. Few nursing educational innovations or pedagogies in nursing have been adopted in such an array of settings/levels. METHOD A review of the nursing literature was conducted to locate reports of research on and teaching innovations derived from Narrative Pedagogy. RESULTS Narrative Pedagogy has an extensive and longitudinal body of research describing how the approach contributes to the educational transformation the discipline seeks. CONCLUSION Narrative Pedagogy and the growing literature describing how it is enacted provides a way for teachers and students to persist in questioning their current understanding of nursing, the ways they think about the situations they encounter, and how their practice can best be learned.

Safeguarding patients through continuing competency.

To ensure patient safety, it is crucial that nursing change the paradigm from demonstrating competency to continuing competency.

Enabling Narrative Pedagogy: Inviting, Waiting, and Letting Be

AIM This article describes how teachers enable Narrative Pedagogy in their courses by explicating the Concernful Practice Inviting: Waiting and Letting Be. BACKGROUND Narrative Pedagogy, a research‐based, phenomenological approach to teaching and learning, extends conventional pedagogies and offers nursing faculty an alternative way of transforming their schools and courses. METHOD Using hermeneutic phenomenology, interview data collected over a 10‐year period were analyzed by coding practical examples of teachers’ efforts to enact Narrative Pedagogy. RESULTS When Narrative Pedagogy is enacted, teachers and students focus on thinking and learning together about nursing phenomena and seek new understandings about how they may provide care in the myriad situations they encounter. CONCLUSION Although the Concernful Practices co‐occur, explicating inviting experiences can assist new teachers, and those seeking to extend their pedagogical literacy, by providing new understandings of how Narrative Pedagogy can be enacted.

Advancing the Science of Nursing Education: Rethinking the Meaning and Significance of Impact Factors

It is not the case that impact factors are unhelpful and that their use should be abolished. Indeed, ISI is continuing to refine existing and develop new databases to provide important information to researchers, administrators, librarians, and editors. Impact factor data do provide useful information for the review process if used judiciously and with an awareness of what these data do and do not indicate. Perhaps it is timely for members of the nursing discipline to think more broadly about the nature of impact and to talk more about the ways in which review processes can account for the many ways the impact of research can be demonstrated. For example, as part of the review process, reviewers might ask each researcher to provide exemplars from teaching or clinical practice settings in which their research is actually being used. Researchers might also be asked to describe the impact that has occurred in ways other than through publication (e.g., presentations, consulting) and how this impact was determined. Creating review processes that allow researchers to describe their decision making related to disseminating their research and how this reflects their ability to influence the discipline may provide a more realistic picture of impact than calculated figures alone.

Enacting Narrative Pedagogy

Abstract Reforming nursing education to meet contemporary challenges in educational and clinical environments is needed through the development and implementation of new pedagogies. Nancy Diekelmann is advancing the science of nursing education by describing a new phenomenological pedagogy, Narrative Pedagogy, identified through interpretive research in nursing education. Narrative Pedagogy is an approach to reforming nursing education that is always site specific and not generalizable from school to school. However, the processes of Narrative Pedagogy are transferable and can be enacted in many contexts. This study describes the common experiences and shared meanings of teachers and students engaging in or enacting Narrative Pedagogy. Diekelmann gathered seven teachers and students in five schools of nursing in four midwestern states to share their experiences. Interpretive phenomenology was used to analyze the group interview. One of the findings identified during this analysis, Enacting Narrative Pedag...

Burnout and Its Contributing Factors Among Midlevel Academic Nurse Leaders

BACKGROUND Amid concerns regarding administrator shortages, a survey conducted by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing indicates that 10% of all vacant faculty positions are those that include administrative responsibilities. This study was designed to determine the frequency, predictors, and potential retention consequences of burnout among midlevel academic nurse leaders, such as assistant deans, associate deans, and others. METHOD The sample consisted of 146 midlevel academic nurse leaders from 29 schools of nursing. Burnout was measured by the emotional exhaustion subscale of the Maslach Burnout Inventory. Logistic regression models were estimated to determine effects of study variables on burnout and intent to leave. RESULTS Dissatisfaction with workload, dissatisfaction with work-life balance, and hours typically worked per week increased odds of burnout. Burnout was associated with intent to leave. CONCLUSION High workloads and long work weeks are increasing the odds of burnout among midlevel academic nurse leaders. [J Nurs Educ. 2018;57(1):28-34.].