The Complete Guide to Becoming A Nursing Instructor and Teacher, Postsecondary

Chapter 1: What Does a Nursing Instructor and Teacher, Postsecondary Actually Do?

Let's start by clearing the air: a Nursing Instructor and Teacher, Postsecondary is not just a nurse who decided to talk in front of a classroom. You are, first and foremost, a licensed nurse. In virtually every setting, you must hold an active Registered Nurse (RN) license, and you'll be expected to maintain it. But your daily work is about as far from a hospital floor as it gets. You are an educator, a mentor, a clinical supervisor, a curriculum developer, and sometimes a referee between a student and a malfunctioning mannequin.

To understand the job, you have to understand the two very different halves of the work. The first half is the classroom. The second half is the clinical rotation. Most nursing instructors do both.

The Classroom Half: More Than Just Lectures

In the classroom, you are teaching the science of nursing. This means you're responsible for courses like Fundamentals of Nursing, Pharmacology, Medical-Surgical Nursing, and Maternal-Child Health. You're not teaching abstract theory; you're teaching the specific protocols, drug calculations, anatomy, and patient-assessment skills that a student must master to pass the NCLEX-RN (the national licensing exam every registered nurse must pass).

But lecturing is maybe thirty percent of what you do in a teaching day. The rest is preparation, grading, and student support. For every hour you spend standing at a podium, you'll likely spend two or three hours preparing. That means reviewing the latest evidence-based