The challenge for an educator in a hospital is to provide for the learning needs of a diverse group of practitioners within the hospital that includes nurses who range in experience from advanced beginners to clinical experts. The purpose of this research project was to explore, describe, and compare learning styles and preferences of nurses in two areas of nursing practice: critical care and medical-surgical care. There are multiple facets of learning styles that can be assessed and applied to learning situations. Identifying learning styles may be beneficial to the nurse in order to assist with directing one's own learning but the research did not demonstrate a correlation between learning style, learning preferences or learning outcomes. This study included 107 nurses from critical care and medical-surgical care units at a hospital in western North Carolina. Participants completed the VAK learning styles inventory and selected from list three preferred learning methods. The majority demonstrated a preference for visual learning. Nurses from both practice areas chose skills demonstration as the most preferred learning method. This study failed to demonstrate any links or patterns associated with learning style and learning preferences for education methods for hospital specific education.

Because students learn in different ways, teachers adapt curricula to diverse learning styles. This book presents state-of-the-art research and information on how to use learning-style based instruction in teaching and professional development for nurse and allied health educators.

As fewer individuals are choosing nursing as a career, and many seasoned nurses are leaving the workforce sooner, the nursing shortage is of increasing concern. Investigation of possible avenues to facilitate renewed interest in nursing and greater nurse retention is of significance to nurse educators, recruiters, and managers. Moreover, research reveals student reports of increased interest, enthusiasm, and ease in learning when individual learning styles are facilitated. This study examined the possibility of relationships between student nurse learning styles and the subsequent areas of practice, satisfaction with nursing as a career, and retention within the nursing workforce. The sample for this study was selected from a pool of 115 associate degree nursing graduates from a fully accredited community college in south central Idaho.

The Future of Nursing explores how nurses' roles, responsibilities, and education should change significantly to meet the increased demand for care that will be created by health care reform and to advance improvements in America's increasingly complex health system. At more than 3 million in number, nurses make up the single largest segment of the health care work force. They also spend the greatest amount of time in delivering patient care as a profession. Nurses therefore have valuable insights and unique abilities to contribute as partners with other health care professionals in improving the quality and safety of care as envisioned in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) enacted this year. Nurses should be fully engaged with other health professionals and assume leadership roles in redesigning care in the United States. To ensure its members are well-prepared, the profession should institute residency training for nurses, increase the percentage of nurses who attain a bachelor's degree to 80 percent by 2020, and double the number who pursue doctorates. Furthermore, regulatory and institutional obstacles-including limits on nurses' scope of practice-should be removed so that the health system can reap the full benefit of nurses' training, skills, and knowledge in patient care. In this book, the Institute of Medicine makes recommendations for an action-oriented blueprint for the future of nursing.

Praise for Educating Nurses "This book represents a call to arms, a call for nursing educators and programs to step up in our preparation of nurses. This book will incite controversy, wonderful debate, and dialogue among nurses and others. It is a must-read for every nurse educator and for every nurse that yearns for nursing to acknowledge and reach for the real difference that nursing can make in safety and quality in health care." —Beverly Malone, chief executive officer, National League for Nursing "This book describes specific steps that will enable a new system to improve both nursing formation and patient care. It provides a timely and essential element to health care reform." —David C. Leach, former executive director, Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education "The ideas about caregiving developed here make a profoundly philosophical and intellectually innovative contribution to medicine as well as all healing professions, and to anyone concerned with ethics. This groundbreaking work is both paradigm-shifting and delightful to read." —Jodi Halpern, author, From Detached Concern to Empathy: Humanizing Medical Practice "This book is a landmark work in professional education! It is a must-read for all practicing and aspiring nurse educators, administrators, policy makers, and, yes, nursing students." —Christine A. Tanner, senior editor, Journal of Nursing Education "This work has profound implications for nurse executives and frontline managers." —Eloise Balasco Cathcart, coordinator, Graduate Program in Nursing Administration, New York University

The learning styles of staff nurses were investigated in this descriptive study using Kolb's Learning Style Inventory. The sample consisted of 52 registered nurses working in the various clinical areas of pediatrics, medical-surgical, intensive care, labor and delivery, neonatal intensive care, and the operating room. The setting was a large medical center located in a metropolitan southeast city of the United States. Nurses overall demonstrated a concrete learning style, yet differences in learning style emerged among nurses grouped by age, clinical practice area, and years of work experience in the clinical area. Keywords: Learning curves; Theses. (kt).