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National Teacher Appreciation Day

National Teacher Appreciation Day

April 30, 2022
2:30 pm

Today we celebrate teachers across the nation. Without them, no other profession would exist. They are taking today’s young minds and providing them with tools to shape tomorrow’s leaders. They don’t pursue millions of dollars. Instead, they pursue what they love. Almost any teacher will say that the face of a child who just grasped a lesson is worth more than millions of dollars. Given there is such a great number of teachers to thank in every aspect of education, today we will dedicate this moment to specifically thank our nursing instructors.

Nursing Instructors

Nursing Instructors teach students the skills and knowledge they’ll need to pursue and maintain a career in the nursing industry. This can start as early as high school, when students are receiving basic information to achieve their CNA (certified nursing assistant) license. Students can continue their education by pursuing the necessary courses available to also achieve their LPN (licensed practical nurse) and RN (registered nurse) license.

According to nursingeducation.org, the following is a list of job duties that nursing instructors may hold:

Collaborate to develop a full curriculum
Plan individual courses based on current best practices
Develop courses based on the plan
Provide education to students
Develop evaluation materials to determine competency of students
Instruct students in hands-on care of patients
Evaluate the students’ progress toward their goal
Maintain own clinical competency by continuing clinical work and participating in ongoing continuing education
Consult and collaborate with other instructors to evaluate content and teaching strategies
Serve on academic and community committees to review policies and procedures
Conduct or participate in research studies
Publish research

Florida is Not Meeting the Demand

The Florida Hospital Association predicts that the state will face a shortfall of 59,100 nurses by 2035. One of the key factors that contribute to this is an ongoing shortage of nursing instructors. According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), U.S. nursing schools turned away 80,407 qualified applicants in 2019 due to faculty shortages. This is leading to the current nursing instructors we have, the average age being 55 years old, feeling an overwhelming sense of stress and emotions. This can be contributed to the fact that some nursing instructors feel they are not doing enough with an ongoing shortage of nurses, they are not properly being provided with the tools necessary to succeed, and anxiety due to the lack of time they are able to provide to each individual student.

Indian River State College is one school that is taking proactive steps in contributing to a solution for the nursing shortage. They have announced plans to double the number of graduates in its nursing programs and launch the construction phase of a project that moves the IRSC School of Nursing to its Pruitt Campus in Port Saint Lucie by Fall 2023.

With a massive shortfall approaching our state, along with a shortage of nursing instructors available to combat it, today is an opportunity for all of us to reach out to a nursing instructor and show them our appreciation. This can be done in several ways.

Write a letter or pay a visit to a nursing instructor expressing to them how much you appreciate their contributions to our future
Offer assistance to a nursing instructor by helping to grade papers, clean their classroom, or volunteer to be a part of a presentation or demonstration
Donate much needed school supplies for the class
Use #TeacherAppreciationDay for your social media posts