Letters to the Editor

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To the editor:

While we commend the work of the group that prepared the recent article entitled “Proposed Nurse Educator Competencies: Development and Validation of a Model” published in the July/August issue of Nursing Outlook, we feel it is important to share with the readers of this journal the work that the National League for Nursing (NLN) has conducted that is related to the development of nurse educator competencies. Without a discussion of this work, the readers of this article are not provided with a complete picture regarding nurse educator competencies.

The NLN began its work on exploring the preparation of nurse educators for today and the future in December of 2001 by convening a Think Tank on Graduate Preparation for the Nurse Educator Role to clearly define the knowledge and skills that nurse educators need. Members of the Think Tank included faculty and administrators from all types of nursing education programs, as well as representatives from staff development and the general higher education community. One outcome of this meeting was NLN’s Position Statement on the Preparation of Nurse Educators (NLN, 2002, available at www.nln.org/aboutnln/PositionStatements/prepofnursed02.htm). A second outcome of the Think Tank was a preliminary list of core competencies for nurse educators that was given to a Task Group on Nurse Educator Competencies, which was established by the NLN’s Nursing Education Workforce Development Advisory Council. This group of nurse educators conducted an extensive search of the literature to determine if the 8 competencies identified by the Think Tank participants were documented in evidence-based literature, or if there was a need to modify them. Included in the material reviewed by this group were the nurse educator competencies proposed by SREB in 2002. They worked for 2 years on this task and disseminated their work to the broad nurse educator community, and issued a request for comments that was posted on the NLN Web site during the last quarter of 2003. Based on feedback from the nurse educator community, the Task Group refined the competencies (final version available at http://www.nln.org / profdev / corecompletter.htm) and produced a manuscript, currently in press, that documents core competencies from the literature, identifies gaps in the literature, and proposes research questions that need to be addressed.

The Core Competencies of Nurse Educators^© have also been incorporated into the Scope of Practice for Academic Nurse Educators (NLN, 2005), and already are being used to provide direction for the development of graduate programs that prepare nurse educators since they provide a framework of essential knowledge, skills and attitudes relevant to the educator role. In addition, they formed the basis for the development of the first and only certification program for academic nurse educators.

The NLN throughout its history has been committed to quality nursing education. Providing leadership in the preparation of nurse educators through the development of the nurse educator competencies is one example of this continued commitment.