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Becoming a Nursing Educator

Nursing Educator

Nursing students account for more than 50% of all students in the health care studies. Nursing has the largest number of health care professionals in the country accounting to around 2.7 million registered nurses in the health care industry. Inspite of the growing demand for nursing education, thousands of students are turned away from colleges due to the lack of nursing educators. Can you believe this? According to the US Bureau of Health Professionals the country will be facing a shortage of 800,000 nurses by 2020 and a prime reason for this is that there are no sufficient nursing educators to train all future nurses.

Becoming a Nursing Educator

Registered nurses teach both the patient and their family about handling the disease and the precautions to be taken while under medication, pertaining to diet, post treatment precautions, exercise, attitude, medication and therapy. Registered nurses also teach fresh graduates and the new staffs thereby develop and implement education in the clinical setting. These nurses also take up the role as a teacher in an educational environment by turning their professional experience into a passion for teaching, thereby shaping and guiding the future of thousands of nursing students.

At an older age nurses who have a great passion for their work and leave the job to younger nurses and instead make use of all their knowledge and experience in training students in the nursing education thereby making capable. Of course there are nurses who opt for management services after decades of experience. It is of course necessary, but again management is not everyone's cup of tea.

Now that we are struggling to find more and more of nursing educators, I think it is time experienced nurses take a career shift to become a nursing educator. Not only are they catering to the need of the hour, they are also making the best use of their experience, in developing more and more efficient nursing professionals.

Requirements for becoming a Nursing Educator

To become clinical instructors it is enough if they have Bachelors in Nursing with years of clinical nursing experience. Possessing a Masters degree is a must if they intend to become a faculty member at a university. Today's online education offers the facility of completing master's education in nursing even while continuing with employment. Walden University offers nursing programs. Fast track learning courses are also offered by several universities where both Bachelors and Masters Programs in nursing can be completed at a fast pace of time incurring only half the cost.

Nursing Educator - A career choice

Nursing educators find career opportunities in colleges offering associate and baccalaureate programs in the field of nursing and also as instructors for LPN courses. Nursing educators can be full time faculties at nursing colleges with all the benefits accruing to employees such as tenure and retirement benefits and also part time faculties at such colleges while continuing with their clinical employment and patient care.