Nursing, Nursing Non-Clinical , Exam Prep
The Ins and Outs of Being a CNE®
Jan 17, 2019
With excerpts from Certified Nurse Educator (CNE®) Review Manual, Third Edition, by Ruth A. Wittmann-Price PhD, RN, CNS, CNE, CHSE, ANEF, FAAN, et al.
Thinking about the next step in your career? The nursing profession is a robust field, with certifications running the gamut of clinical, managerial, and educational specialties. But which is the best choice for you? Here, we’ll take a deep dive into what it means to be a Certified Nurse Educator.
Being a CNE®, Certified Nurse Educator: What Does It Mean?
Often known by its acronym, CNE®, a Clinical Nurse Educator is, at minimum, a registered nurse with an additional combination of education and/or experience. In a nutshell, a CNE® is responsible for the education of nursing students at all degree levels.
What Does a CNE® Do?
A CNE® has a wide range of responsibilities, including lesson planning, curriculum building, assessing student competencies, coaching students, creating lectures, and offering advice on projects. As the primary educators for our future health professionals, they’ll advise and guide students to discover which specialty they should pursue, among other things.
Nurse educators need an understanding of learning concepts and theories, strategies for promoting clinical reasoning and higher level thinking skills, deliberate practice and its relationship to developing expertise in psychomotor and clinical skills, and principles for facilitating learner development and socialization. All nursing faculty should know general concepts of curriculum development and their roles and responsibilities in planning the curriculum and courses within it. Nurse educators must be skilled in planning instruction for students with varying learning needs and abilities, selecting appropriate teaching methods, presenting information effectively to small and large groups of learners, integrating active learning methods within classes and courses, and demonstrating evidence-based clinical teaching skills.
Nurse educators, while still having to be exceptional at standard nursing tasks, do have a couple distinctions after they’ve earned this certification. Namely, a CNE® may have less patient interaction, focusing instead on his or her faculty role. This doesn’t mean a CNE® has to give up patient interaction altogether, however; many a CNE® chooses to teach and practice.
How Do I Become a CNE®?
Being a CNE® starts with becoming a Registered Nurse. You’ll then need a combination of education and experience in order to qualify to take the CNE® exam through the National League for Nursing (NLN), which you can learn more about here (link to How to Certify article). The computerized CNE® exam consists of 130 scored multiple-choice questions and 20 pre-test items that do not count toward the score.
Are You Preparing for the Exam?
For more study options, check out our book and app product, featuring 350 practice questions to help you make the grade!
Resources
Nurse educator. (n.d.) Retrieved from https://www.registerednursing.org/nurse-educator/
What you’ll do as a nurse educator. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.allnursingschools.com/nurse-educator/job-description/
Wittmann-Price, R. A., Godshall, M., & Wilson, L. (2018). Certified Nurse Educator (CNE®) Review Manual (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Springer Publishing.