angelo's journey

Angelo Lopez is a 32-year-old registered nurse (RN) who recently completed a master’s degree in nursing from Western University. Angelo has been employed for 10 years as an RN in the Emergency Department at Hamilton General Hospital. Last fall, Angelo accepted a sessional clinical teaching position at McMaster to teach a group of second year bachelor of science in nursing (BScN) students on a medical unit. Angelo thought that his first semester of teaching went well and was shocked by some of the negative tutor evaluation feedback he received from his students:

• Angelo is very intelligent but also a “very intimidating” instructor. He likes to put students on the spot. He provides his feedback in the nursing station and sometimes in the hallways where others can hear what he is saying. He should really be communicating his feedback to his students in private.

• I know that he is an experienced ER nurse and everything, but sometimes his knowledge and skills are just way beyond our current level of practice as students. Like we told him a few times, “We haven’t had our class in IV medication administration yet, so we cannot administer IV meds—that content is taught in year three of the program.”

• His expectations for our learning plans and clinical worksheets are not always consistent with the course outline. It’s so frustrating!

Angelo takes his nursing education job seriously and would like to improve his clinical teaching and supervision approaches. He is looking into any available online and in-class teaching and learning resources he can take at the university before he begins his next clinical teaching rotation in a couple of months. He is also planning on meeting with the course lead to get a head start on the upcoming term.