Whitireia: There is a shortage of nurse educators internationally – and in Aotearoa, difficulties recruiting and retaining qualified educators tends to result in a workforce that is not representative of the diversity across Aotearoa.

Whitireia New Zealand Nursing Programme Manager, Leanne Pool, has spent most of her nursing career working as a nurse educator.

“I’ve spent more than 25 years now working in nursing education and seeing people come and go. When I started my Doctorate, I wanted to look at what the role of nurse educator entails to highlight it as a career more nurses might choose.”

She says changing health care and nursing workforce demands have resulted in a complex nurse educator role.

“My literature review identified the nurse educator as someone expected to be an expert practitioner, a skilled educator and involved in research knowledge generation or translation,” she says. “There is a disjuncture as a nurse works between the worlds of nursing and education.”

As well as having her own practice to draw from, Pool also conducted in-depth interviews with 15 other nurse educators throughout New Zealand from seven institutions representing both the institute of technology and polytechnic (ITP) and university sectors. From here, she created fictionalised narratives reflective of nurse educator experiences.

“Using writing as a method of inquiry was a new concept for me to explore and understand,” she says. “The first narrative I wrote was from my own experience and that was at the proposal stage to confirm that this could be a way of presenting the data. I was able to provide analysis through the language I used and the ways in which I chose to tell the stories.”

In addition to her own narrative, Pool wrote two archetype stories – one from the perspective of a new nurse educator, and the other representing an experienced practitioner.

Another narrative was dialogue-driven, set at a nursing education forum where six characters participated in a discussion of power relations and structures and happenings in nurse education.

For her final narrative, Pool created an avatar called Kaiako Tapuhi that envisioned what a nurse educator might be like in the future.

One of the most evident threads Pool identified through this process was around identity formation when moving from a clinical environment into the education world.

“There was perhaps a lack of understanding of what it means to be a nurse educator,” she says. “What came through very strongly for all the participants was that being a registered nurse was at the core of their identity, so they then grappled with understanding their work as a clinician, an educator and an academic researcher.”

Another finding was the impact of limited representation for Māori and others who are not part of the dominant culture.

“From an Aotearoa New Zealand perspective, there are inequities in our systems and structures in both education and healthcare,” she says. “The impacts of the resulting marginalisation can affect a nursing educator’s sense of identity.”

Pool hopes her research can lead to the development of a career pathway for nurses into nursing education.

“I would like to develop a pathway that includes support and mentorship for nurses around identity formation, not only during the initial transition period, but also in terms of the academic requirements of the role.”

Nurse educators have an influential position, she notes, and equity is a key consideration.

“Our role is to form the nursing workforce of the future, so we have a huge impact on what happens in health. We need to understand issues around inequity ourselves in order to make that difference – that must be a priority for us.”

Pool is looking at publishing her research as a book, so it can be used nationally to support new nurse educators as they enter the profession.

• Leanne Pool is a registered nurse originally from Canada who has been working in the field of nursing education in Aotearoa New Zealand for over 25 years. She is currently the Programme Manager for the Bachelor of Nursing and New Zealand Diploma of Enrolled Nursing Programme at Whitireia New Zealand. Leanne recently completed her Doctor of Education at Auckland University of Technology (AUT), and her research interests include nursing education practice, and the use of narratives as a research methodology. Contact Leanne Pool
  
  
• Visit Whitireia New Zealand