Nurse Educator

Hey guys, I want to take you through this nurse educator role and if you’re interested in going into this type of specialty later in your nursing career, then I’m going to give you just the information on how to go about this. First I want to go through who a nurse educator is because they can take on a couple of different roles. So first they can be instructors either in a clinical setting. So with clinical students taking them around to take care of patients, showing them what that’s like in nursing school. They can also teach in a classroom setting.

Um, the other type is going to be a staff educator. This is usually unit based. So if you’re on a med surge floor, you would have a unit based educator for your unit. That is to make sure everyone’s getting the education they need. When new equipment comes out, they’re getting everybody through that training. These educator types do not put hands on a patient. Typically they are just in charge of unit/staff education and not in charge of patient care anymore. So becoming a nurse educator, if this interests you, what you’re going to do is this: so you already have your RN, you get your RN, you’ve passed your boards, you’re working, and you are going to start working on your masters in nursing. So get your MSN and you want to pick the education track. So there’s a couple of types of MSNs and you can do administration or education track for instance. Check out our lesson on different MSN degrees.

So during this process, you want to work on any unit. You don’t have to work on a specific unit to be a nurse educator. So work where ever you are happy working and then participate in any education you can. So if your floor lets the nurses be involved in making posters or putting out new education or for instance when we started getting switched over from paper charting to computer charting, we had people that specialized and took extra classes to help nurses get through this transition. We’ve gotten new pumps and we get what we call smart users. And these are people that just have gotten a little extra education on it and can help walk people through how to work the pump. So participate in any education you can because you’re, then you kind of get your hand in it, you get a feel for it and make sure that you really like it.

So some things to consider. So unit educators, like I said, they don’t usually do any patient care anymore. So make sure you’re okay with that. And I won’t say that that’s for all facilities, but just most of them because the educators are busy educating so they’re not taking care of patients as much anymore. So make sure that if you are interested in doing that, that you know you’re going to be stepping away from patient care. Experience is important. Nobody wants an educator who is fresh out of school telling them what to do, right? So get experiences and nurse work in the work in the different units, get experience, um, and it will help you be a better educator also and then get involved while you are gaining that experience. So those posters, smart users, whatever your facility might call them, but get that extra training, get involved so that you can help be an educator. If there’s students on your floor a lot, take them with you, asked to be assigned to students that you can get that experience.

Some key points. So you will finish with an MSN and you remember, you want to go on the education track, you need to get experience, right? We want more experience so that you can be the best educator and then, um, get involved. So it’ll make it easier for you if you’re involved. So in those posters with students, whatever it may be. All right guys, we love you all. Go, go out and be your best selves today. And as always, happy nursing.