NLN Publishes Five New Titles in Time for Annual Education Summit

Achieving Excellence in Nursing Education African American Voices: Reflecting, Reforming, Reframing Building the Science of Nursing Education: Foundation for Evidence-Based Teaching and Learning  Clinical Nursing Education: Current Reflections Minority Nurses in the New Century

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New York, NY — September 2, 2009 — The National League for Nursing has announced the publication of five new titles, reflecting the NLN's commitment to excellence, one of the four core values that undergird the organizations mission "to promote excellence in nursing education to build a strong and diverse nursing workforce." All publications, available through the online NLN Marketplace, will also be featured at the 2009 Education Summit, September 23 - 26 in Philadelphia, where editors and contributors will be on hand to autograph copies.

"We are so pleased to be able to offer our community of nurse educators this excellent selection of titles, which are both timely in their themes and, will, we believe, be of practical use in terms of their content," said NLN CEO Beverly Malone, PhD, RN, FAAN. "As purveyors of excellence, we applaud the continued commitment to scholarship in nursing education that these volumes represent and anticipate that they will quickly become essential additions to the professions literary canon."

• Achieving Excellence in Nursing Education, edited by Marsha H. Adams, DSN, RN, CNE and Theresa M. Valiga, EdD, RN, FAAN, articulates "the scope of the NLNs vision for excellence in all types of nursing programs and the ways in which nursing educators can strategically coordinate their efforts to achieve excellence in their teaching practice and in their schools," Dr. Pamela M. Ironside wrote in her foreword. The book is structured around the NLN's Excellence in Nursing Education Model© and Hallmarks of Excellence in Nursing Education©, both developed to guide faculty and administrators in a quest for excellence, and calling for "transformative strategies with daring ingenuity." The concluding chapter by Dr. Linda Caputi reminds readers that achieving and sustaining excellence is the responsibility of everyone – students, faculty, administrators – involved in this challenging and forward-thinking enterprise.
  
  
• African American Voices: Reflecting, Reforming, Reframing, edited by Pamela V. Hammond, PhD, RN, FAAN, ANEF, is the second work in a series devoted to promoting diversity in nursing and nursing education – the first, Asian American Voices: Engaging, Empowering, Enabling, was released in March. Dr. Hammond, provost of Hampton University, a historically black university, wrote in her preface: "The issues in African American Voices ¦are screaming to be heard!" The books first chapter, written by NLN CEO Beverly Malone, pays posthumous tribute to two pioneering African American nurses who mentored her, nurturing a vision that has informed her approach to leadership and authority. Dr. Malone's chapter sets the stage for those that follow, which outline the critical need to support nurse educators from underrepresented populations, and strategies for doing so. There is an emphasis throughout the book on the recruitment, retention, and graduation of African American nurses.
  
  
• Building the Science of Nursing Education: Foundation for Evidence-Based Teaching and Learning, edited by Cathleen M. Shultz, PhD, RN, CNE, FAAN and president-elect of the NLN, is the culmination of a seven-year project by the NLN Task Group on Teaching-Learning Paradigms, which Dr. Shultz chaired. The contributors, all seasoned nurse educator-scholars, thoroughly investigated existing studies of nursing education practice and created the first model for building a science of nursing education, which, it is hoped, will serve as a foundation for continuing scholarship in the field. There are chapters devoted to the essentials of learning and teaching-learning in the cognitive, psychomotor, and affective domains. The concluding chapter is a broad overview of the task groups work and points to challenges that remain to be tackled by future scholars for whom this volume is designed to be a resource.
  
  
• Minority Nurses in the New Century, edited by Hattie Bessent, EdD, MSN, RN, FAAN and organized into three sections, expands on Dr. Bessents earlier groundbreaking body of work. Dr. Bessent has dedicated her professional career to the inclusion of ethnic minority nurses in education, research, and practice and to the development of their leadership skills and opportunities. In Section 1 of Minority Nurses, Dr. Bessent presents a follow-up to her 2002 survey, Characteristics and Workforce Utilization Patterns of African American, Asian American/Pacific Islander, Hispanic, American Indian/Alaskan Native, Caucasian and, for the first time, mixed-race RNs. In Section 2, researchers Schuyler Webb, PhD and Juanita Fleming, PhD verify Dr. Bessents 1997 findings of continuing under-representation of minority nurses and recommend effective strategies and methods for improving minority recruitment and retention by schools of nursing. The third section is a series of critical essays that provide context for the issues of recruitment and retention of racial/ethnic minority nurses raised by the surveys.
  
  
• Clinical Nursing Education: Current Reflections, edited by Nell Ard, PhD, RN, CNE, ANEF and Theresa M. Valiga, EdD, RN, FAAN, ANEF, was conceived as a unique resource for seasoned and novice faculty as well as for graduate students on the nurse educator track. The book aims to help the profession re-imagine clinical education, historically, the essential core of nursing education, and examine the impact of new models for clinical education in an increasingly complex environment of health care delivery. The book grew out of the editors experiences as part of the NLNs Task Group on Clinical Education, Blue Ribbon Panel on Research in Nursing Education, and Think Tank on Transforming Clinical Nursing Education. Calling it a "treasure of useful scholarly information that challenges the status quo of clinical education," NLN President-elect Cathleen M. Shultz, lauds the editors for bringing together "noted leaders in nursing education to comprehensively discuss topics that will shape the future of clinical teaching."

Reporters/Editors: For review copies and to arrange interviews with editors and contributors, please contact Karen R. Klestzick, NLN chief communications officer, at 212-812-0376 or kklestzick@nln.org.

Dedicated to excellence in nursing, the National League for Nursing is the premier organization for nurse faculty and leaders in nursing education offering faculty development, networking opportunities, testing services, nursing research grants, and public policy initiatives to its 30,000 individual and 1,200 institutional members.