An innovative strategy to assist novice nurse educators’ transition into the academic faculty role

21^st World Nursing Education Conference

July 16-18, 2018 Melbourne, Australia

Kem B Louie

William Paterson University, United States

Keynote: J Nurs Care

Abstract :

The purpose of this presentation is to examine the academic nurse faculty shortage particularly in the United States and worldwide. The study discusses the research of an innovative strategy to assist novice nurse educator�s transition into the academic faculty role by incorporating the National League for Nursing Competencies for the Academic Nurse Educator in the professional development program. The academic nurse faculty shortage has been described and researched for nearly the last 20 years in the United States. Currently, the national nurse faculty vacancy rate is estimated to be 7.9%. In the US, a large portion of the faculty rate is related to positions requiring doctoral degrees. Also the National League for Nursing (NLN) found that of the 673 member schools of nursing, 554 schools have reported difficulty in recruiting and hiring faculty. Several reasons have been found to this shortage and they include increasing faculty age, retirement, higher compensation in service settings, and masters and doctoral degree programs not graduating large numbers of students. There is also research that the shortage of academically qualified faculty in schools of nursing is also occurs worldwide. Several reasons found by Nardi were global migration of nurses, aging of nursing faculty, devaluation of faculty role by nursing, devaluation of faculty role by universities, financial incentives to leave faculty role among others. More recently, in addition to the reasons found leading to the nurse faculty shortage, attrition of faculty other than retirement is being studied. Fang and Bednash in 2014 studied attrition from 2010-2011 in the US and found the attrition rates to be 11.8%. They found in the survey that 20% was due to retirement, 48% left for non-academic positions, 14.4 % left for full time positions at other schools of nursing and 11.2% left for part-time positions at schools of nursing and in hospital service and nonacademic positions. Within this last group, it was reported that the faculty were generally were non-tenures and did not have a doctoral degree, low salary, heavy workload and dissatisfied with the faculty role. Other reasons found by Suozzo in 2015 include role conflict and lack of job satisfaction. Others noted the lack of or ineffective mentoring and faculty development for novice educators. There were two qualitative studies on novice faculty in Pakistan and Iran which also addressed role conflict and job dissatisfaction. It is proposed in this presentation that an innovative professional/faculty development program be provided as part of the transition for the novice faculty. Parris and Moss in 2016 noted that finding ways to assist the clinical expert nurse to become an expert nurse faculty include transitions programs which include role transition through mentoring with experience nurse faculty. The author has conducted research on novice nurse educators and experienced nurse educators in the US. Utilizing the National League for Nursing Competencies for the academic nurse educator (2013), a survey of skill acquisition of the competencies was sent to faculty in schools of nursing in seven states. Of the 1366 survey distributed, 276 questions were returned. Significant differences were found between novice and experience nurse educators.

Biography :

Kem B Louie is working as a Director of the Graduate Program in William Paterson University, United States

E-mail: louiek@wpunj.edu