Teaching Strategies Every Healthcare Educator Should Know
Teaching Strategies Every Healthcare Educator Should Know
Healthcare education provides an exciting opportunity to inspire and empower clinical professionals. This field can be deeply gratifying, especially for passionate professionals who want to expand their influence and help develop a more capable and informed workforce. Healthcare educators may come from a wide range of disciplines, including nursing, medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, nutrition, and public health, each bringing unique expertise to the learning environment. Despite these rewards, this field can present significant challenges: clinical concepts can be difficult to convey, especially when working with diverse students or delivering instruction online.
High-impact teaching strategies can make all the difference in determining whether complex clinical concepts resonate and whether students can apply crucial skills in real-world environments. Education-focused graduate programs offer a deep dive into the most effective teaching strategies and the learning theories and principles that underscore these techniques. Keep reading to discover the most impactful strategies for teaching and learn how a master's in health education can deliver impressive outcomes in the classroom and beyond.
Understanding the Role of a Healthcare Educator
Healthcare educators draw on a deep understanding of clinical practice and standards of care to help future professionals develop in-demand skills. These educators can work in many settings but share a desire to empower the healthcare professionals of tomorrow.
Through a distinct blend of theoretical coursework, thought-provoking simulations, and real-world learning experiences, healthcare educators prepare the clinical professionals of tomorrow to provide high-quality care in diverse healthcare environments.
The Importance of Healthcare Education
Healthcare education sets the stage for strong outcomes across the healthcare sector, ensuring that aspiring clinical professionals acquire the skills and knowledge needed to maintain stringent standards of care.
In healthcare education, the stakes are truly high. Research shows that educational quality has a direct impact on patients. Documented effects of high-level clinical education include fewer medication errors, lower readmission rates, and even shorter lengths of stay. While researchers often focus on the importance of pursuing specific degrees (such as the Bachelor of Science in Nursing), the quality of instruction is arguably just as crucial as the credential itself.
Skills Every Healthcare Educator Should Have
Healthcare educators possess a wide range of skills, including not only the clinical competencies that have already fueled clinical success, but also the ability to convey these clinical insights to current or future health professionals. This calls for tailored messaging that appeals to diverse students, with instructors designing educational experiences that both challenge and engage aspiring healthcare professionals. Soft skill development, in particular, is important, with the most successful educators demonstrating these key competencies:
- Critical thinking and problem-solving
- Emotional intelligence and empathy
- Written and verbal communication
Effective Teaching Strategies for Healthcare Educators
Every course, learning experience, and group of students presents unique challenges that must be addressed with carefully curated teaching materials and proven instructional methodologies. Still, a few basic techniques are consistently trusted to spark increased engagement while helping students rapidly develop both theoretical knowledge and clinical skills.
Active Learning Techniques
The typical portrayal of an educator involves lecturing while students listen intently, but in reality, the reverse is even more crucial. Active listening forms the basis of effective instruction because it ensures that instructors fully understand their students' needs and perspectives. When students have the chance to speak freely, educators should listen intently, striving not only to hear what students say but also how they express themselves. Active listening techniques include:
- Signal attentiveness. Nodding or maintaining eye contact can provide a powerful indication of an attentive and caring instructor. These signals encourage students to express themselves and get actively involved in their educational experiences.
- Reflective speaking. When responding to students, healthcare educators should paraphrase to confirm understanding. This may involve rephrasing student responses to reinforce their messaging, all while keeping the door open for further discussion.
Incorporating Technology in Healthcare Education
Tech-driven tools deliver immersive opportunities, bringing the nuances of real-world clinical scenarios to controlled environments. For instance while these digital strategies are increasingly leveraged to make online instruction more engaging, such tools can also shape in-person learning. This offers the chance to refine clinical or decision-making skills without harming patients. From virtual reality (VR) to clinical simulation software, many cutting-edge options should be explored to keep coursework fresh.
Encouraging Critical Thinking and Decision-Making
Case studies, simulations, and group projects help students develop in-demand soft skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making. These experiences force students to consider how they might tackle challenging situations once immersed in clinical environments. Along the way, students learn to draw on research-backed insights and diverse perspectives, ultimately making strategic decisions that are both evidence-based and patient-centered.
Utilizing Assessment and Feedback for Growth
Student assessments help instructors understand whether their learning strategies actually resonate and, if not, what can be done to foster greater understanding. There are many ways to assess student knowledge, and preferred methods may depend on the types of materials or experiences evaluated. Written assignments, class discussions, and exams can indicate the various facets of student understanding, but performance-based assessments are especially vital when determining students' readiness to apply their skills in real-world healthcare settings.
Promoting Interdisciplinary and Team-Based Learning
Healthcare professionals work in teams to deliver coordinated patient care, and ideally, healthcare instruction will reflect this deeply collaborative approach. Educators can promote teamwork by planning group projects and other collective experiences that encourage diverse students to work together towards shared goals.
Teaching Through Real-Life Patient Stories
Storytelling can be a transformative educational technique, especially in the healthcare space. This makes complex concepts feel more relatable while reminding students of the human side of healthcare. Known as narrative pedagogy, this powerful technique aims to promote compassionate, patient-centered care.
As the BMJ journal Medical Humanities reveals, this acts as a "conduit through which nurses are able to gain greater insight into the world of their patients," ultimately driving greater efficacy in everything from relationship-building to diagnoses and treatment planning.
Practicing With Simulated Patient Interactions
Bedside manner represents a huge challenge, even among the most knowledgeable clinical professionals. These difficulties exist partly because standard theoretical coursework provides limited opportunities to build or actively practice soft skills such as empathy and communication. It's one thing to know, for example, that patients require empathy and another altogether to demonstrate this when immersed in high-pressure settings and scenarios. Simulated patient interactions address this common gap in understanding, helping clinical professionals understand how to listen actively and even how to anticipate patients' needs.
Applying Knowledge Through Community-Based Learning
The in-depth clinical study can provide a solid conceptual framework, but for many students, the real challenge involves drawing on this expertise to drive positive outcomes, especially in high-pressure environments or situations. This is where integrating clinical and problem-solving skills becomes especially important, but this can be difficult to do within the confines of the traditional classroom.
Therein lies the value of community-based learning, which can help ease the transition from the classroom to the clinic. By regularly experiencing real-world healthcare settings, students learn the routines, structures, and decision-making processes behind evidence-based practices.
Overcoming Challenges in Healthcare Education
Although healthcare education can be deeply rewarding, it presents distinct challenges that may feel unfamiliar or downright frustrating to those with a strictly clinical background. Common concerns include:
Addressing Diverse Learning Styles
No two students will find every lesson or experience equally resonant. All carry unique experiences and learning styles, which healthcare educators must strive to accommodate. This means using a blend of instructional strategies to help diverse students thrive.
For example, some students may require dynamic visual aids, while others respond best to hands-on learning and problem-solving scenarios. Be mindful of these diverse learning styles when developing learning materials or activities. Also, be prepared to adjust communication styles to ensure that complex concepts resonate with different types of students.
Managing Student Stress and Burnout
Given the inherently high stakes of healthcare education, it's easy to see why students feel pressured or stressed. Instructors can play a valuable role in teaching students how to manage inevitable stress while also dealing with issues such as compassion fatigue. Furthermore, educators must strike the ideal balance, challenging students without making them feel overburdened, especially as so many students tackle the simultaneous difficulties of work and school.
Keeping Up With Evolving Healthcare Practices
No longer exposed to the everyday realities of the clinical world, healthcare educators can quickly feel out of touch. This lack of understanding can emerge quickly due to the fast pace of change within the healthcare sector. For this reason, ongoing networking is crucial and must incorporate clinical professionals and fellow healthcare educators. The effort to keep up with the fast-paced healthcare industry may also involve reading peer-reviewed journals, attending industry conferences, or staying involved with professional organizations.
Learn to Empower and Inspire Students as a Healthcare Educator
Are you eager to support the healthcare professionals of tomorrow? Check out Texas A&M's Education for Healthcare Professionals (EDHP) programs and prepare for a bright future in healthcare education.
Offering curated certificate and master's degree programs, we are passionate about supporting future healthcare educators and encouraging them, in turn, to support future healthcare professionals. Get in touch to discover how our EDHP programs can help you make a lasting impact in healthcare education.
Sources
https://medicine.tamu.edu/degrees/edhp.html
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8440404/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK442015/
https://blogs.bmj.com/medical-humanities/2021/12/30/nursing-through-the-lens-of-storytelling/