Date of Award
2017
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science in Nursing (MSN)
Committee Chair
Frances Sparti
Abstract
Nursing schools throughout the country are facing a dilemma over how to concisely and fairly count faculty's clinical workload hours. Faculty members report dissatisfaction with their workload as one of the reasons for leaving the education field and contributing to the shortage of qualified nursing educators. There is no standardized method or policy for counting clinical teaching hours, so schools are left to create their own policies or simply not have one. The purpose of this study was to determine the perceptions of the faculty members at a community college of the current clinical teaching workload policy and to determine if that policy needed to be changed. A mixed methods research study was conducted modeled on Lewin's Change Theory to get the faculty member's input before and during any changes implemented to the clinical workload policy. The results showed the faculty did not have a clear understanding of the term clinical teaching nor did they understand the policy as it was written. It was recommended that changes be made to the clinical workload policy to better define clinical teaching and to give the faculty clearer guidelines for reporting time spent on clinical teaching duties.
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Citation Information
West, Melinda, "Clinical Workload Policy in Nursing Programs: Striving to Be Equitable and Transparent" (2017). Nursing Theses and Capstone Projects. 282.
https://digitalcommons.gardner-webb.edu/nursing_etd/282