Strategies Adopted by Novice Nurse Educators to Facilitate Their Transition From Practice to Academia: A Qualitative Study in Ghana

Introduction

The global mission of nursing schools is to train competent and qualified nurses with adequate knowledge, attitude, and skills to strengthen health systems to meet population needs and improve public health (World Health Organization, 2009). The education of health workers, including nurses, is constantly evolving and the appropriate preparation of nurse educators is critical to the development of knowledge, skills, and attitudes of nurses (World Health Organization, 2016). For the nursing profession to be successful, competent educators are required in academia, and the successful transition of nurses from clinical practice to academia is critical to this agenda (Spencer, 2013). Many nurses with expertise in the clinical area are being recruited for faculty positions, however, for these clinicians to become expert teachers require strategies that will foster pedagogical development because clinical competence does not automatically translate into teaching expertise in the academic setting (Smith et al., 2019; Spencer, 2013). Many nurses who leave the hospital setting, where they are skilled clinicians, to teach in the academic setting often find the transition challenging (Legare & Armstrong, 2017; McFadden & Sims, 2017; Parris & Moss, 2016).

Becoming an adept teacher takes a sufficient amount of time (Murray et al., 2014), and just as new nurses require support and guidance to mature in their professional practice, nurse educators need support in their novel roles (Spencer, 2013). The critical role of nurse educators in preparing the nursing workforce justifies much more comprehensive strategies to support their adaptation to faculty (World Health Organization, 2006). To successfully transition from the nurse–patient role to the teacher–student role, novices need satisfactory mentorship support (Kalensky & Hande, 2017; Lynch et al., 2017; Seekoe, 2016), individualized faculty orientation support (McKinley, 2009; Ross & Silver Dunker, 2019), adequate pedagogical skills training (Booth et al., 2016), higher nursing degrees (Owens, 2018) among others. However, without the requisite support and guidance, novice nurse educators (NNEs) encounter difficulties in transitioning from their role at the bedside to the classroom and consequently adopt some self-inspired and informal coping strategies to facilitate their transition into academia (Schoening, 2013).

In Ghana, most nurses and midwives are trained in Nursing Training Colleges (NTCs), which are often but not necessarily, affiliated with teaching hospitals (Bell et al., 2013). These NTCs run certificate and diploma programmes in nursing and/or midwifery and the core teaching staff are tutors mostly with first degrees. At the time of data collection, there were five public universities that run baccalaureate nursing programmes in Ghana which award a bachelor’s degree upon completion. Unlike the NTCs, the core teaching staff in the universities are lecturers often with PhDs. However, all nursing tutors in the NTCs and lecturers in nursing departments of the universities were previously clinical nurses and midwives who transition into the academic role as educators.

Studies from countries other than Africa exploring facilitators of the transition from clinical practice to academia have revealed remarkable findings (Grassley & Lambe, 2015). Some cited facilitators of the transition from practice to academia as reported by NNEs in Texas, USA were: attending continuing education conferences, prior working experience, and receiving help from coworkers, other faculty, mentors, and supervisors (Mann & De Gagne, 2017). Also, a qualitative study on transition to faculty in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, USA revealed that when support and guidance were needed, NNEs sought information from several sources; these included relying upon past experiences, applying knowledge from past clinical skills, reading textbooks, and attending professional development activities. The study concluded that the most effective adaptive strategy associated with the experience of transition was peer guidance and support (Shapiro, 2018).

Some integrative reviews on the transition from clinical to educator roles in developed countries have identified several facilitators of the transition including comprehensive and individualized faculty orientation plans, constant high-quality mentorship, pedagogical preparation for the job, and time to develop teaching abilities (Fritz, 2018). Also, formal preparation for teaching, guidance on navigating the academic philosophy, and structured mentorship programmes are all cited as facilitators of the transition to academic nurse faculty (Grassley & Lambe, 2015). Again, organized mentorship and good mentoring relationship, professional development via faculty development programmes, faculty socialization, inclusion in faculty activities, and interpersonal and organizational assistance have all been recorded as facilitators of the transition from practice to academia (Legare, 2013).

Other facilitators of the transition have been reported in Australia including setting goals for professional development, developing skills in handling difficult conversations, identifying learning needs in advance, networking to decrease isolation, mentoring, and collaborating with a mentor on shared projects (McAllister et al., 2014). A similar study in Ireland found that seeking support from colleagues, educational preparation, formal mentoring and orientation programmes, and regular performance appraisal facilitated the transition from practice to academia (Dempsey, 2007). These studies demonstrate that the transition of NNEs from practice to academia in high-income countries is often facilitated by a wide range of formal institutional strategies.

Studies on the facilitators of the transition from practice to academia are limited in Africa (Mulaudzi et al., 2014). For instance, a South African study involving neophyte nurse educators revealed that attending conferences and in-service training, and formal mentorship was the most common assistance offered to South African neophytes nurse educators (Mulaudzi et al., 2014). Also, through a qualitative and theory-generating study, a model for mentoring newly appointed nurse educators in nursing education institutions in South Africa was developed and has been a major facilitator of the transition from practice to academia in South Africa (Seekoe, 2014).

In Ghana, like many countries in West Africa, no single study has been done on the facilitators of NNEs’ transition from practice to academia. To fill this gap, the current study seeks to explore and describe the strategies adopted by novice nursing educators to facilitate their transition from practice to academia in Ghana. Findings will form a groundwork for the development of formal and evidence-based strategies to ensure a stress-free and successful transition from practice to academia. However, this paper reports one objective of a larger qualitative study that explored the transitional experiences of NNEs in Ghana.

Methods

Data Analysis

Data were manually analyzed simultaneously with data collection through thematic analysis following the six steps described by Braun and Clarke (2006) for identifying, analyzing, and reporting themes within qualitative data. Each recorded interview was analyzed before moving on to the next one. Codes were identified with an inductive approach using the following steps: (1) each audio-recorded interview was transcribed verbatim (by TTL) and read several times to familiarize with the data. (2) Initial codes were then generated by two of the authors (TTL and FA) individually, to ensure credibility and consistency of coding. (3) The codes were sorted into potential themes and a thematic map was prepared to ensure that the themes were in relation to the coded extracts. (4) The potential themes were reviewed and discussed by the two authors (TTL and FA) and some potential themes were further broken down. (5) Defining and naming of the themes were set (Figure 1) and (6) the final report was then produced.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Theme map.

Results

Discussion

This is the first study to explore and describe the strategies adopted by NNEs to facilitate their transition from practice to academia in Ghana. The study findings showed that deprived of administrative support and guidance, NNEs adopted a wide range of self-inspired and informal strategies to facilitate their transition from practice to academia. The implications of this current study are discussed in light of previous studies.

NNEs adopted the strategy of seeking support from their peers within the college to help them to search for information, assist them to set questions, help them to prepare lecture slides, assist them to learn how to mark patient–family care study, and plan lessons. In some instances, novices sought support from their peers in other colleges outside the region and even from lecturers in some universities. The current study finding is consistent with earlier studies conducted that identified that NNEs often sought support from their peers to help facilitate their transition from practice to academia (Jeffers & Mariani, 2017; Mann & De Gagne, 2017; Spencer, 2013). The importance of peer support as a facilitator of the transition from practice to academia cannot be overemphasized, because, when support and guidance are needed, NNEs often seek information from many sources, and by far, the most effective adaptive strategy related to the experience of transition is peer guidance and support (Shapiro, 2018). However, a significant finding in the current study is that the support novices sought from their peers was mostly self-motivated and informal and in most instances outside their respective colleges. This, therefore, highlights the need for mentors within the colleges. Some studies in other countries including the USA have found contrary findings and reported that a more formal strategy in the form of formal mentorship for NNEs within their colleges is a better strategy to facilitate the transition from practice to academia (Grassley & Lambe, 2015; Hinderer et al., 2016; Martin & Douglas, 2018; Shieh & Cullen, 2019). Therefore, we recommend that administrators of NTCs should create and implement faculty mentorship programmes to mentor NNEs. College authorities can also adopt and modify already existing faculty mentoring models from other countries such as South Africa (Seekoe, 2014) and Australia (Slatyer & Kimberley, 2017) to help facilitate the transition process.

Attending workshops and conferences organized at the regional level was an important strategy adopted by NNEs to facilitate their transition from practice to academia. Left without support and guidance from college administrations, NNEs resorted to attending workshops and conferences organized at the regional level on teaching and learning methods, and test item construction. NNEs also attended some workshops on the use of ICT in teaching, how to set questions, competence-based learning, neonatal care, and new pedagogical skills which were organized outside the region. It was evident that NNEs learned a lot about their novel profession through these workshops and conferences but these workshops were on broad topics and not based on the individual needs of participants. These findings corroborate existing scholarly studies (Mulaudzi et al., 2014; Owens, 2018; Shapiro, 2018). This finding is not different from a phenomenological study in Iran where Iranian novice faculty members had to attend a set of educational workshops on teaching and assessment methods to facilitate their transition process (Heydari et al., 2015). However, the study emphasized that the workshops were not based on the specific needs of novices and proposed more formal strategies such as orientation and mentorship to help novices safely transit into academia under the supervision of experienced colleagues (Heydari et al., 2015). What is significant in the current study is that, albeit NNEs learned a lot of teaching and learning methods from these workshops and conferences, they were mostly informal and organized outside their colleges and even outside the region. This highlights the need to identify better and more appropriate strategies within the colleges, such as faculty orientation programmes to facilitate novices’ transition to academia as done in some developed countries including the USA (Lynch et al., 2017; Reid et al., 2013; Ross & Silver Dunker, 2019). We recommend that administrations of NTCs should develop, evaluate, and implement college-specific orientation programmes for NNEs to include important components such as mission and vision of the college, organogram, curriculum, syllabi, lesson planning, teaching methods, and grading of students.

Performance appraisal and feedback are commonly reported by previous researchers as facilitators of the transition from practice to academia (Anderson, 2009; Dempsey, 2007; Fritz, 2018) and, in the current study, it was a common strategy adopted by NNEs to facilitate their transition to academia. NNEs periodically gave pieces of paper to students to write good and bad observations about their teaching and worked on areas that needed improvement. They also obtained verbal appraisals and feedback from their students on a semester basis and went on to describe it as a strategy that helped them to improve upon their delivery in the classroom. Again, NNEs in this study obtained performance appraisals from their co-tutors. Our study finding is consistent with a study conducted by Cooley and De Gagne (2016) where the participants used student evaluations of their teaching performance to help them identify and understand where and how they needed to improve. They recognized the value of feedback from the students to guide their professional advancement as nurse educators, and their constant analysis of student comments enabled them to be self-evaluative and presented them with the opportunity to become better teachers over time (Cooley & De Gagne, 2016). This finding of our study suggests that even though NNEs relied on appraisals and feedback as a strategy to facilitate their transition, the verbal method used in collecting the feedback was informal and inconsistent with best practices, as it did not protect the anonymity of the students. According to Mower (2017), performance appraisals and feedback are best collected in the form of a checklist or anonymous online survey, at the end of the learning session where everyone contributes. Therefore, we recommend that college authorities should consider implementing an evidence-based method of tutor appraisals such as regular online appraisals by students, preferably, at the end of each semester as is done by most public universities in Ghana.

In this study, all participants relied heavily on their past clinical nursing knowledge to facilitate their transition from practice to academia. Novices mostly applied their previously acquired rich clinical skills to teach some nursing procedures such as: checking vital signs, wound dressing, and administration of IM injections. Others applied their previous clinical expertise in teaching their students how to manage obstetric emergencies in the classroom as well as bed making. Past studies also confirm the findings of our study (Fritz, 2018; Mann & De Gagne, 2017; Schoening, 2013). According to Parris and Moss (2016), identifying and applying skills that nurse clinicians acquired at the hospital setting, helps in facilitating the transition to novice nursing educator role. New nurse educators can apply many of their previously acquired clinical skills in the academic setting. Appling these past clinical skills will foster confidence in NNEs and lay the foundation for a successful transition into their novel nurse educator role (Parris & Moss, 2016). Therefore, this finding comes as no surprise because all NNEs in the current study had enormous clinical experience (average: 7.25 years, range: 6–10 years), and it was expected that they would fall on such rich experience to teach their students (Schoening, 2013).

Strengths and Limitations

A strength of the study was the integration of multiple sites of data collection (space triangulation) which enhanced the credibility of the study. However, a limitation of the study was the lack of diversity of the sample studied. Most NNEs were males, only one participant had a midwifery background, and only two NNEs had a public health background. These limit the transferability of the study findings to other nurse educator populations.

Conclusions

The study explored the strategies adopted by NNEs to facilitate their transition from practice to academia. NNEs adopted a wide range of strategies to facilitate their transition from practice to academia such as seeking support from peers, attending workshops and conferences, relying on performance appraisal and feedback, and applying past clinical nursing knowledge. However, this study indicates that the strategies were mostly self-inspired and adopted informally, which calls for more formal and evidence-based strategies to facilitate the transition process. Administrators of NTCs must create or adopt and modify faculty mentorship models to mentor NNEs. Also, Administrations of NTCs should develop and implement college-specific orientation programmes for NNEs to include important components such as the mission and vision of the college, curriculum, syllabi, planning of lessons, teaching methods, and student assessment. Finally, college authorities should consider implementing an evidence-based method of tutor appraisals such as regular online appraisals by students, preferably, at the end of each semester. Future studies should include more midwives and nurse educators with other nursing specialty backgrounds.