It's All About Care: The NLN at the Forefront of Nursing
Caring is why learners seek nursing and why the development of caring, compassionate nurses is the work of faculties and a sacred trust.
For me, education is the crown jewel of our profession. Each of us indirectly influences more patient care than any single researcher, administrator, or nurse ever could. Through the NLN, we can strengthen our own faculty tool kits. And in the next two years, while I have the honor to be NLN president, we will add to our expertise in two distinct ways.
International
The NLN's mission statement includes an important word: global. During our two years together, we will focus on international nursing education and educators. Advances in health care practices span the planet as quickly as diseases like Ebola take airplane rides to new populations. I believe it is essential that we alert our students to their identities as citizens of the global village and that we ourselves, as global faculty, show the world how to use international awareness to build best practices.
Over the years, I have learned from nurse faculty around the world. Rich conversations have opened my eyes to similarities and variations in both nursing care and education. Our languages may be different, but our messages are the same: Nurse educators speak the language of the heart. Our passion for human beings and their welfare permeates our lives.
Like nurse faculty in the United States, our global counterparts are responsible for the quality of their programs and their graduates. Their unique pathways to excellence are fascinating and merit our attention. Let us consider, for example, clinical instruction. For many of us, the difficulty of finding clinical placements for our students and competent clinical faculty to guide them is a barrier to program effectiveness and expansion that hinders our efforts to address the urgent need for more nurses, and for more well-educated nurses.
Other nations tackle clinical faculty differently. In some places, guiding students is part of the professional role of all nurses, an expectation in their job descriptions. They routinely work as preceptors, without university-based faculty on site. What can we learn from educators who design courses and work in that way? How can those educators learn from the clinical faculty roles we use?
I can say without hesitation that there is excellence in many international programs that reaches and exceeds the standards of our Centers of Excellence program. One of my NLN dreams is to welcome our first COE recipients from another nation during my term as president, and to provide a forum for them to tell us their stories.
National
Inherent in the NLN commitment to nursing education is dedication to students and to the nursing profession itself. We promote a climate that emphasizes comfortable communication and professional commerce between students and educators. We encourage students to exercise sound clinical judgment, to practice ethically, and to support and respect their colleagues. These obligations are at the heart of the nurse educator's work, to influence the next generation of nurses to value caring, collaborative learning, and ethical standards.
The NLN fully supports the ANA's - and other national organizations' - current focus on ethics. We will explore ethical guidelines for nurse educators in line with our core values, because ethical principles for nursing education provide a foundation for ethical practice for all members of the nursing education community.
I pledge that my presidential priorities and activities will remain true to what we've explored together: We'll embrace our members, expand our mutual horizons through international dialogue, and explore codes for our own conduct. You have my solemn promise that I will operate from my deep conviction as to why the National League for Nursing exists - to give our nursing faculty the best resources to advance the crucial role of teaching, that is, the protection and advancement of the cadre of people who want to be nurses. It is all about care - making life easier for others.
Caring for faculty places the NLN at the forefront of nursing, and guarantees that quality health care will be part of our nation's, and the world's, future. This is why the NLN was created, and why I am honored to be your president.