Nurses are arguably the most critical cog in the healthcare wheel, considering their role in comforting, advising, and supporting patients & their families. If you are a nurse educator, you owe it both to yourself and to the world to mentor highly competent and skillful nurses. Your teaching strategies should equip learners sufficiently in patient care, medical administration, illness management, and diagnostics. And because the learners have different abilities and are most likely from diverse cultures, ethnicities, religions, gender identities, races, etc., you must be sure to create an accommodative classroom for everybody. This is how you can do that:
1. Encourage good student relationships
Strong relationships between in-training nurses make peer-to-peer learning pretty straightforward. Struggling students get a fair fighting chance when they have a community around them. Good student relationships also help learners to build nursing soft skills such as critical thinking, empathy, communication, and collaboration.
You can enhance student relationships through, among other things:
– Group projects. Ensure that each group is as culturally diverse as possible.
– Gamification. When used in nursing education and training, games make complex concepts simpler, fun, and engaging. A good example of a training game for nurses is a crossword puzzle of medical vocabulary, nursing concepts, or any other nursing school content.
– Competitive quizzing where students can quiz each other and award points.
2. Leverage online resources to help slow learners
Online resources allow student nurses to comb through course materials and learn independently at their own time and pace. You can find incredible course materials on online learning platforms for medicine, student forums & discussion boards, and journal articles. There also are recorded lectures, tutorials, graphics, and quizzes on YouTube that enhance self-paced learning. These are materials you can use either as supplemental material or in classroom settings to enhance learner engagement and knowledge retention.
If you have medical students that are preparing for Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), Preclinical Exams, United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE), Comprehensive Medical Exams, or others, make sure to guide them to use study guides for USMLE Step 1, MCAT, or other relatable ones, that offer explanations suitable for all learners.
3. Ecourage students to educate themselves
Unconscious biases and stereotypes always get in the way of inclusive learning environments. That is why you should encourage students to be very deliberate about unlearning outdated beliefs and adopting more inclusive, progressive ideologies. Teach and train your nursing students to view the world from diverse perspectives. Make students curious about different countries and their cultures. Being aware of all these and other stereotypes will make nurse students more conscious when it comes to the professional etiquette that they shuld have at work whenever they have to work with patients of different cultures and backgrounds.
4. Develop an inclusive curriculum
Make sure that minorities in the class don’t feel discriminated against or overlooked by your curriculum. For example, when giving a lecture about family structure, you must be careful not to disregard family structures that some people might consider “unconventional”. When giving a lecture on communicable diseases, be careful not to exclude certain backgrounds while drilling down on certain backgrounds.
The language you use can also make or break an inclusive nursing class. You have to ensure that the pronouns you use are as inclusive as possible; that they are not outdated or offensive. Refrain from dictating to individuals how they should or should not identify in terms of gender or race. And when you have to use English idioms that non-native English speakers don’t understand or may find offensive, be sure to explain and apologize where necessary.
Lastly on this point, in cases where historical events affect our society as we know it today, don’t shy away from talking about those historical facts no matter how sensitive they could be. Have those tough conversations with learners and challenge them to face facts no matter how uncomfortable. That way, minorities feel seen and understood while the majorities get a chance of checking their biases. They become better nurses as a result.
5. Leverage simulations
Simulations will help you appeal to different learning styles more effectively. Some of your students are visual learners who learn best through observation. Others are kinesthetic learners who learn by doing. Others are auditory learners who learn by talking and discussing medical concepts. You can accommodate all these groups by using regular real-world simulations. Manikin simulations, for example, enable visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners to comprehend patient care techniques easily and in their own unique ways.
Conclusion
Nursing students feel respected and safe in an inclusive nursing class. They are confident and have the self-esteem needed to excel in both their studies and careers. It is your job as an educator to create such an environment for nurses under your care. It will take a raft of deliberate measures to create such an environment, but you will get there if you’re determined and consistent enough.
