Day in the life of
Adjunct Nursing Professor – Dr. Jenna Liphart Rhoads
I am a nursing professor. I teach in the graduate program at Texas Women’s University (TWU) as an adjunct professor and the University of Wisconsin- Green Bay (UW-GB) as a full-time instructor.
A normal day for me starts at 6 am when I’m teaching clinical, or around 8 am when I am working from home or teaching a didactic class.
I always start my day by checking emails to see if there are any emails from my students or peers with pertinent information I need for clinical or my classes. When teaching clinical, I spend the day in an in-patient hospital unit with 6-8 students helping them learn various aspects of patient care and how to be a nurse. Depending on the unit and the students, I will either work directly with them taking care of patients or the students will work with the bedside RN and I perform observation assessments of the students. For didactic courses, I am in my office for office hours 1 hour prior to the class and use lecture and group activities within my courses. I spend my office hours working on grading, prepping, or working directly with students who show up for help. For online courses that I teach, I check my email and the course LMS (Canvas) multiple times a day for messages from students, to grade assignments, and to monitor the student discussion boards.
Pros
I love being able to work with both students AND patients as an educator; it’s the best of both worlds. This type of position also allows for flexible hours (not 8-5 every day) and no holidays or weekends, which is typical of a regular RN role. This type of schedule allows me to be home with my family during the summers and more frequently throughout the year. I also enjoy teaching because it keeps me educated and “up to date” with nursing practice as well. It allows me to be a “jack of all trades” rather than have one specific specialty.
Cons
The biggest disadvantage for me is with teaching online courses; they allow for complete flexibility for me but I do miss engaging with my students in person. I have found that there are more communication issues with online courses than with other types of nursing courses.
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Nursing Professors
demonstrate and teach patient care in classroom and clinical units to nursing students. Includes both teachers primarily engaged in teaching and those who do a combination of teaching and research.
The Helper
