Associate Professor of Nursing, Harrisburg Area Community College

>> My name is Dr. Kristie Berkstresser. And I am a faculty member at Harrisburg Area Community College in their nursing department. I'm the Coordinator for the Practical Nursing Program. And I also teach at the Pennsylvania College of Health Sciences in their RN to BSN program as an adjunct faculty member. It depends on what day of the week it is. Within the pre-licensure nursing program, our students have basically three components of their program to be successful. It's a 12-month program. So depending on what day of the week it is, either on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, they would be engaged in clinical activities. Which is application of what they're learning in the classroom and the laboratory setting. Tuesdays, Thursdays would be classroom or a lecture day, where I'm teaching the didactic content that students will then apply in that clinical setting. And then for my RN to BSN students, that, of course, is primarily lecture and group discussions. In preparation for a lecture topic, there's a lot more preparation than what people think. I always tell new faculty members that I am helping to mentor or train in that role. I always figure eight hours of preparation for every hour in the classroom. So it's a lot to put together a lecture. So, and then you're constantly revising and updating once you have that created. So it's not like an English course where, you know, Nathaniel Hawthorne story is not going to change. It is what it is. It's not going to change. But health care is constantly changing and keeping up with that. So a lot of preparation goes into that. Then teaching and making sure that you're teaching to every learning style that the students in your classroom have. And I teach to a very diverse population. I have students in my classroom that are fresh out of high school. My oldest student was in her 70's. I teach to a very wide, I have lots of students that have English as an additional language. So it's a very diverse, and I have to meet all of their needs in that classroom setting so that they can understand the content that's being presented. So not only do I teach the didactic portion. But then in the clinical setting, my job is to make sure that the students are practicing nursing in a safe fashion. So allowing the students to do what it is that they need to do, but also making sure that they're engaged in safe practice. And stepping in appropriately to stop if something is not going to be safe. And then in the laboratory setting, I develop and create simulations where we ask students, without those cues from faculty. Which students sometimes rely, I shouldn't sometimes, all the time, rely on those little nonverbals or those little verbal cues that we as faculty give students. We actually step out of the simulation room so they're not looking to us for those verbal and nonverbal cues. And allow them to engage in a simulation where, if they do something wrong and the patient may die, that's okay. And then we talk about it in the debriefing portion. So I develop and create the simulations then that we do with students as well.