Sherri Melrose

For healthcare professionals, clinical education is foundational to the learning process. However, balancing safe patient care with supportive learning opportunities for students can be challenging for instructors and the complex social context of clinical learning environments makes intentional teaching approaches essential. Clinical instructors require advanced teaching knowledge and skills as learners are often carrying out interventions on real people in unpredictable environments. Creative Clinical Teaching in the Health Professions is an indispensable guide for educators in the health professions. Interspersed with creative strategies and notes from the field by clinical teachers who offer practical suggestions, this volume equips healthcare educators with sound pedagogical theory. The authors focus on the importance of personal philosophies, resilience, and professional socialization while evaluating the current practices in clinical learning environments from technology to assessment and evaluation. This book provides instructors with the tools to influence both student success and the quality of care provided by future practitioners.

Teaching Health Professionals Online: Frameworks and Strategies is a must-read for professionals in the health care field who strive to deliver excellence in their online classes. Intended for a wide range of professionals, including nurses, social workers, occupational and radiation therapists, chiropractors, dietitians, and dental hygienists, this compendium of teaching strategies will inspire both new and experienced instructors in the health professions. In addition to outlining creative, challenging activities with step-by-step directions and explanations of why they work, each chapter in the text situates practice within the context of contemporary educational theories such as instructional immediacy, invitational theory, constructivism, connectivism, transformative learning, and quantum learning theory. Melrose, Park, and Perry also address other issues familiar to those who have taught online courses. How can a distance instructor build teacher-student relationships? How does one transform the assumptions often held by students in the health fields from the confines of the virtual classroom? Most importantly, how can the instructor support his or her students in their future pursuits of knowledge and their development as competent professionals? By considering these and other concerns, this handbook aims to help instructors increase student success and satisfaction, which, the authors hope, will ultimately produce the best possible patient care.

As a practice-based profession, clinical learning experiences play an important role in supporting nursing students toward developing the knowledge, skills, and attitudes they need to work in a wide range of practice settings and specialty areas. The role of the clinical instructor is to facilitate students' progress and to prepare them to meet entry-to-practice competencies. To fulfil that role, clinical instructors need to extend their expertise as practitioners to also become effective educators. They must demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of the curriculum students are required to follow at both the program and course level. They must also understand the policies, procedures, and everyday tasks implemented in the clinical areas where they teach students. As key members of both academic communities and practice communities, clinical instructors are required to establish collaborations among their students, their faculty colleagues, and the health professionals they encounter in clinical placements. Straddling the complexities of being a clinical instructor is not easy. This innovative text provides essential theoretical and practice-focused information for clinical instructors teaching in nursing programs in Canada as they learn to navigate this multifaceted role. Written by experts in clinical teaching from across Canada, this textbook will be of value to both those new to clinical instruction and those who have years of experience but are interested in continually improving their pedagogical knowledge and skills. Topics range from the historical context of practice-based learning to clinical teaching in various settings including acute care and community. The role of the clinical instructor, the pedagogy of clinical teaching, clinical judgment and reasoning in the clinical setting, and clinical evaluation are all discussed. Finally, the legal and ethical dimensions of clinical instruction are reviewed, and case examples are provided. This content reflects the Canadian Association Schools of Nursing's standards for excellence for undergraduate clinical instructors. Throughout the book, emphasis is placed on the positive impact an educator's own commitment to lifelong learning can have on the clinical instructor's role.

Many of today's learning environments are dominated by technology or procedure-driven approaches that leave learners feeling alone and disconnected. The authors of Centring Human Connections in the Education of Health Professionals argue that educational processes in the health disciplines should model, integrate, and celebrate human connections because it is these connections that will foster the development of competent and caring health professionals. Centring Human Connections in the Education of Health Professionals equips educators working in clinical, classroom, and online settings with a variety of teaching strategies that facilitate essential human connections. Included is an overview of the educational theory that grounds the authors' thinking, enabling the educators who employ the strategies included in the book to assess their fit within curriculum requirements and personal teaching philosophies and understand how and why they work.