2. The Instructional Role
• The role of the clinical instructor is MULTIFACETED,
requiring shifts in the nature of interactions with
learners as the instructor recognizes and responds
to learners’ needs in the various situations that
evolve both in the clinical setting and in encounters
outside that setting.
• Can be best described as involving a continuum of
interactions that begin with a student-teacher
relationship in which the learning situation is largely
teacher-controlled and move toward a collegial
relationship in which learning involves a mutual
encounter between two nurses.
3. 3 Principles that guide the evolving
instructional relationship with students:
1. The instructor must maintain
boundaries while fostering trust and
communicating caring.
2. The instructor must immerse herself in
the instructional role.
3. Continual performance as a role
model of professional nursing.
4. The Clinical instructor as a:
Teacher
– Provide great deal of structure and focus
for students,deliberately guiding their
activities.
Functions:
• As coach, expresses her belief in the capacity
of students to succeed and instills in them an
expectation of their own success.
• As preceptor, involves more watchful listening.
5. Supervisor
• Clinical supervision keeps the instructor aler to each
student’s progress in the clinical area, both in
executing the assignment and demonstrating
competence and skill in performing nursing
functions with patients.
• Functions:
• As safety officer, “walking around” is done to
detect student practices that might affect
patient safety.
• As disciplinarian, she must act in ways that
protect the patient and maintain the dignity of
the student.
6. Evaluator
• in two important and distinct ways:
– Formative evaluation
• Requires a lot of openness and interaction
between instructor and students as each
communicates their observations and experiences
in the clinical setting.
– Summative evaluation
• Process of applying judgements to evaluative data
to determine the grade each student will receive in
the clinical component of the course.
7. Nurse
• Functions:
– As Role model
• able to demonstrate aspects of the nursing
role that are difficult to articulate to students.
– As Future Colleague of students
• Should strive to communicate her enthusiasm
for nursing and the joyful aspects of this
professional career.
– As mentor
8. Communicating Caring
• Knowledge and experience are assumed to
contribute to learning nursing.
• Caring as involving authentic presence and
connectedness with the other, characterized
by active patterns of helping and enabling.
• The essence of caring interaction between
faculty and student was recognition
(involved attending), connection and
affirmation/confirmation. (Hanson and Smith
1994)
9. 3 ingredients contribute to the instructor’s
success in communicating caring to students:
• Is to be “being in” the instructional role
rather than “playing” the role.
• Knowing the content (that is, feeling
confident and comfortable in th clinical
setting)
• Instructor needs to value people.
10. Conveying Enthusiasm
• It is the instructors leadership skills that enable
her to motivate and inspire students as they
engage in learning.
• The instructor can communicate her enthusiasm
by highlighting the unique possibilities contained
in the students assignments.
• The instructors sense of passion about nursing-
and about teaching nursing to others-
encouraged and inspires students to emulate
her high standards.
11. Conveying Enthusiasm
• Nursing can be a source of delight and
fun, and students should be encouraged
to recognize the humor in many of the
situations they encounter.
• Enjoying the work of nursing and learning
contributes to emotional health,uplifts staff
and can be a source of comfort and
reassurance to patients.
13. 1. Setting Goals
– Establish the instructor’s expectations for student
performance.
– The focus is to address both goals for patient care
and goals for student learning.
– General goals (related to the objectives for the
clinical experience)
– Specific goals (develop in relation to past
performance or experience)
2. Communicating Values
– Once value has been incorporated into once
practice, it is seldom articulated; the action accord
with the value speaks for itself.
14. 3. Motivating Perfomance
– Students’ enthusiastic engagement in activities can
be promoted by an explanation as to why the activity
is important and how it contributes to futur nursing
practice.
4. Praising
– Positive feedback on performance is an important
component of formative evaluation contributes to
students’ motivation.
5. Providing Corrective Feedback
– Instructors must focus on the behavior and its
effects.
15. 6. Preventing Unsafe Practice
– Important factor in alleviating stress and focusing
students’ attention on situations that could result in
error or jeopardize patient safety.
7. Describing Performance deficits
– Focus on patterns of behavior rather than on
isolated episodes, and its consequences rather
than on the students and her adequacies.
8. Disciplining a student
– Identify the behavior in a matter-of-fact manner.
– Cite any prior instances of the same or similar
behavior.
– Outline the consequences of continued episodes
of similar behavior and the rationale for these.
