Clinical Nursing Instructor skills for your resume and career

Communication and teamwork. Clear communication as a clinical nurse educator is critical. Clinical instructors will supervise students in a complex, fast-paced clinical environment. This requires clear, timely, and professional communication. In respect to teamwork, clinical nursing instructors can expect to work with a team of course faculty in the classroom, lab, and clinical setting. During clinical, instructors work with the staff nurses and healthcare team. It is vital for clinical instructors to maintain positive group dynamics. Students, staff, and patients will often reach out and seek instructors who convey approachability, warmth, and competency in the clinical setting.

Writing, assessment, and application of the nursing process in the clinical setting are important technical skills. Clinical instructors will lead nursing students and teach safe nursing care during the clinical experience. An advanced understanding of assessment, best practices for safe patient care, and applying safe clinical judgment in the health care setting are most important.

I like to tell everyone that the Medical Laboratory degree (at any level, Associates, Bachelors, Masters, and now Doctoral, DCLS) is like majoring in four areas. One of the most rigorous degrees one can obtain, and the professional career is no different because we are continually learning, based on the real-time, best medical evidence of laboratory medicine.

Here are some broad strokes for what new graduates will need in the coming years - 1. Communication skills; 2. Problem-solving and troubleshooting; 3. Use their math and science skills, especially the core foundations of medical laboratory science - hematology, immunohematology (blood bank), clinical chemistry, and microbiology; 4. Professionalism (manage yourself, others, time, and things); 5. Self-starter with the ability to work alone and in groups across healthcare and with the public; 6. Empathy and sympathy for colleagues as well as the patients we serve.

We have learned that prospective employers really appreciate when students have worked at the bedside. This includes as a nurse technician. In particular, they appreciate students who have spent full shifts working along an RN in a care delivery setting. We call this the Nursing Capstone Clinical, which is usually offered a student's final semester of nursing school. Not only do employers know that students have been able to show up on time and meet the demands of a 12-hour shift and all the care that is implemented during those hours, students also highly value the experience. They feel that now they have a better sense of what to expect. They've also benefited from the wisdom of their preceptor, particularly when unusual incidents come up that would not have been addressed in nursing school. The RN preceptors we have worked with have been awesome role models in this regard.

Other skills would be personal presence and patient support/communication. I do mock interviews for my senior nursing students and I receive great feedback from both students and the leader volunteers from local healthcare organizations that conduct the interviews for me through this Leadership Class activity. The students appreciate that they have a better sense of what to expect in an interview. The interviewers seem to appreciate those students who can step up and engage fully in the interview, identifying their strengths, ability to communicate and show that they care and have a passion for patient care.

It seems many employers need something that catches their attention from the myriad number of applicants and limited jobs they have to offer a new grad. Volunteerism, leadership opportunities and participation in special nursing-related projects seems to provide an extra boost to those students who show their enthusiasm and competence for nursing in this way.