Challenges and Support Mechanisms for Nurse Educators during Transition from Clinical Nursing to Nurse Educator: A Commentary on Role Transformation

Nursing is an intricate profession and qualified nurse educators who possess sound theoretical, clinical and evidence-based knowledge is important for ultimately delivering the knowledge and skills to the students and producing the competent nurses. By providing effective nursing care the best patient care outcome can be achieved 1. Undoubtedly, the role played by nursing instructors is considered significant to bridge the theory practice gap and to impart the new learning into the future nurses. Moreover, the shortage of nursing faculty is a risk to the quality of education, bearing implications for health sector. This issue hinders the smooth transition of clinical nurses to nurse educators as they need to adopt continuously fresh knowledge, revisit curriculum, student-cantered learning approaches 2. Their ability to understand and address these challenges is important, and a complete understanding of these issues which they face during the transition phase may be supportive in boosting their classroom teaching abilities 3. Failure in meeting with the requisite capabilities that is essential in imparting compassionate, evidence-based care lead to sense of disorientation and have the impact on overall satisfaction level of their duties 4.