Abstract
Background: Prelicensure nursing programs often hire clinical experts who are novice educators to teach integration of nursing clinical judgment within the context of patient care experiences.
Purpose: To describe practices of schools of nursing to onboard, orient, and mentor newly hired faculty.
Methods: Faculty (n = 174) and leaders (n = 51) replied to an online survey.
Results: The majority (81.63%) of leaders hire novice nurse educators; 58.14% require a minimum bachelor of science in nursing degree; 54.72% have an orientation plan consisting of a mean of 13.86 hours, which was mostly asynchronous learning. Of the 77.08% of leaders with an onboarding plan, 84.13% assign a preceptor; 51.35% of them are compensated.
Conclusions: Most schools of nursing hire experienced clinical nurses who are novice nurse educators, without organizational structures to support acquisition of teaching expertise. Academic institutions are called on to support clinical nurse educator professional development. Evidence is needed to design effective and fiscally pragmatic onboarding programs based on the certified nurse educator competencies.