Nursing Higher Education and Leadership Clinical leadership is very important because of the problems that characterize the health care sector, including workforce shortage, high rates of change, staff chaos, quality issues, and safety concerns, among others. From history, the preparation of nurses for key roles in the health care delivery system is quite important and should not be overlooked. (Joseph & Huber, 2015). I am trained both as a clinical nursing educator and perioperative nurse. Clinical nurse educators attain that title after much experience in nursing. They mainly coach nursing students and the newly graduated ones. Perioperative nurses on the other hand are registered nurses who help in the surgical department in hospitals, day surgery units, physician’s offices and clinics. Their main work is to assist in planning, implementation and evaluation of treatment for surgical patients. (Turunen et al., 2017).

As such, the perioperative nurse starts her work immediately the patient is told of the need for surgery, and continues through the surgery and after the surgery. Spry (2016) divides the surgical process into three phases: preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative. These three make up what we call “perioperative”. The perioperative nurse is therefore tasked with providing care during all these three phases. Initially, perioperative nursing was called “operating room nursing”, which actually pointed to the care that was given to the patient during the intraoperative period. The intraoperative period is normally centred within the operating room. With time, the role of the nurse expanded into the pre- and postoperative periods, and thus the term perioperative was adopted as a more appropriate one (Spry, 2016; Turunen et al., 2017). We can therefore now rightly define the perioperative nurse as one who specializes in the care of surgical patients before, during and after the surgery.

Proposed program

The proposed program will cover two main areas: clinical rotations in the day surgery arena; and externships during school breaks. The externships serve to connect both the learner and the university to the local area hospitals. As such, there is need for a paradigm shift in regards to how nursing leaders in practice and academia work together and with the rest of the leaders in clinical practice and higher education. Such a shift is the only way to realize the full benefits of academic nursing, especially in this age where collaborations are mandatory for success. (Sebastian et al., 2018) Freshly graduated nurses are most times not skillful enough to get into leadership. After graduation, and while in the workforce, these nurses need some time for self-discovery, where they analyze themselves critically to know what their strengths are, what their weaknesses are, their fears, their threats, and so forth. This on-job training will impart important skills on the nurses, taking into account that they benefit from peers and mentors who are already in leadership. This behooves the mentors to be enthusiastic, passionate and dynamic, so that their influence on the new nurses may...

They ought to be people of such a character that someone else can look up to.
The transition from a nursing student to a registered nurse should be filled with clinical instruction experiences. This is especially essential in the internship year. The classroom lessons should be full of real life experience. AlThiga et al., (2017) and Fielden (2012) express the need for nurses to be endowed with theoretical and scientific know-how, particular psycho-motor and technical skills, cultural competence, communication skills, ethnic conduct and professional values. These will help the nurse to face the reality of the clinical setting. The internship should include sessions in the emergency room, operation room, and critical care, so as to equip the nurse with the required knowledge.

The student nurse intern will work under the close supervision of the registered nurse in providing care for the surgical patients. The program has a three-fold purpose as outlined below:

1. Create a realistic working environment for the student nurse intern

2. Help the student nurse intern to have a feeling of the actual health care setting.

3. Give the student nurse intern deeper insight into professional nursing. (Hemmerich et al., 2015)

It is believed that the student nurse intern will have acquired enough skills and ability to think critically by the end of the program. Below is an outline of the professional and clinical objectives of the program:

1. Successfully complete didactic programs, show demonstration of skills in a designated area of nursing

2. Impart critical thinking skills in the student nurse interns

3. Enable the student nurse intern to relate nursing to other knowledge fields such as sciences, liberal arts and humanities.

4. Train the student nurse intern to conduct physical assessments, come up with plans of care, assess patient outcomes and evaluate their responses.

5. Inculcate a spirit of team work in the student nurse intern (Holtz & Gnambs, 2017)

Evaluation of the program

Nursing students on externship should be technically evaluated to ensure the program’s objectives are met. The evaluation process is a multi-dimensional one and rigorous so to say. It should be in line with the provisions of Assisting, Developing and Evaluating Professional Nursing Interns, an initiative of the the Board of Nursing. The evaluation process is comprised of the following:

1. Assisting, Developing and Evaluationg Professional Nursing (ADEPN)

2. Assessing the Performance Standards

3. Midterm and final evaluation reports of the interns

4. Student nurse intern work samples

As earlier mentioned, ADEPN is system of helping professional nurses meet their goals. The ADEPN performance standards conform with the nationally recognized standards. And it is not only beneficial during the internship period; it serves the nurses throughout their career. Performance is something to be evaluated continuously, whether one is just a year old in the field, or has 20…