When I was in nursing school back in the early 2000s, our schedules were intensely overloaded with hours of endless lectures. We sat at our desks for one to two hours at a time during pre-professional classes, but the nursing courses suddenly doubled in intensity, vigor, and time. Short, infrequent breaks are what kept me sane—I’d run across the street to the campus library café for a midday dose of caffeine. I never explored coffee until I explored nursing.
Had you asked me as a nursing student what my ambitions were upon graduation, I would’ve told you that my adrenaline-junkie self wanted to work in all the critical care units. Never did I imagine myself falling head-over-heels for all things pediatrics. If you then asked me as a novice nurse what my career goals were, I would’ve probably told you that I someday wanted to be a nurse practitioner. After a solid five years of working the floor, I realized I wanted to make a bigger and more direct impact on nursing by diving head-first into academia.
Several years after working the occasional weekend as a clinical instructor, I stumbled upon the opportunity to transition to a full-time didactic instructor. This was a learning curve like no other. I had already been out of graduate school for several years and had to re-learn a thing or two about curriculum development.
Early on, my anxiety fueled my mornings more than my coffee did. How in the world could I make the “painful” experience of nursing school fun, or at the very least, as “painless” as possible? We do it for our patients; why not for our students? I can still see myself through these students, sometimes: over-stressed, sleep-deprived, and you guessed it, caffeine-ridden.
Empathy and reassurance help but can only go so far. Nursing is an endlessly beautiful realm to explore, but getting there and not harming a single human in the process is the scariest of times, especially as a student, but even more as their educator.
As a certified pediatric nurse, school nurse, educator, and community advocate, my entire experience thus far had revolved around teaching children about IVs, the “tiny drinking straws that give their thirsty little veins fluids and much-needed medications.” Or how being a “sneezer pleaser” and proper handwashing can ultimately save lives. I felt a connection to children because of their endless optimism, resilience, and eagerness to learn more.
Then I realized something: Nursing students are those “children.” The day-one timid individual entering a classroom for the first time ever, the student learning a new [medical] language, the front-row charismatic Hermione Granger of the class with the color-coded notebook … they’re all there to learn, and most of them have enough life experience to drive their eagerness to learn. So how could I set my lecture hall apart? How could I keep them engaged? How could I simplify learning concepts they aren’t familiar with? I learned quickly: Keep it simple, and don’t forget to play a little.
Though I am the only nurse in my family, I grew up surrounded by educators—my mother, a special education early childhood teacher, gifted me her creative spark. My mother tirelessly came up with activities that engaged little ones, and I was always amazed at what she came up with. Tracing letters into colored sand to learn the tactile and visual motion of writing letters is no different than asking a nursing student to un-cap a pen, one-handedly with their pointer finger, to mimic the motion of advancing an IV catheter needle into a patient’s vein. In a time with complicated technology, there is a great need for simplified techniques that will help students remember and recall information with little effort so they can focus on critical thinking.
Techniques I frequently utilize in my classroom that have proven to be effective include self-made colorful dittos, crossword puzzles, interactive notes, meme-matching activities, and yes, even mini videos/TikToks when appropriate, in between critical thinking activities and NCLEX questions. This is not only engaging learners in active learning; it’s also giving them a break from hammering endless content into their brains that otherwise may not stick and providing it in small, fun, digestible pieces.
This is microteaching—short bursts of content that allow students to review and provide the educator feedback in real-time. It is easy to create these activities using systems such as Canva, Microsoft Word, Procreate, or Adobe Creative Cloud platforms.
“Simple” teaching or even “micro” teaching doesn’t have to be “old school” in terms of delivery. Nursing students, and others alike in medical programs, must be taught higher-level thinking that is not just based on memory or repetitive tactile movements. Artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to our advantage to generate patient case studies for practice, like using Canva to generate an avatar to deliver a report or patient testimony. ChatGPT can easily be utilized to assist an educator in creating patient profiles and case studies that mirror concepts to be taught in didactic courses, or even translated to a hands-on simulation approach.
Whichever the method, I encourage educators to keep current, but don’t forget this important thought, “In what context would I have loved to have learned when I was a nursing student?” If you can center your classroom activities on that question, you’ll never know what you will inspire in our future nurses!
Deanna M. Vilardell, MSN, RN, is an instructor at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso and a member of Sigma’s Alpha Beta Theta Chapter.