Q&A with Ashley N. Carter, assistant professor of nursing at USI
Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
In October, the University of Southern Indiana College of Nursing and Health Professions announced Ashley N. Carter as the winner of the 2023 Excellence in Teaching Award from the Indiana League for Nursing.
Carter started her teaching career at Ivy Tech Evansville in 2007 and served as department chair for five years. She became a member of the nursing faculty at USI in 2020. Carter spoke with Inside INdiana Business about the state of nursing and the growing need for nurse educators.
Tell me about your nursing career before you got into education.
I started nursing in 1999. I graduated from [the University of Evansville] and worked at Deaconess Hospital as a nurse. There was probably about a seven-year time frame right after I graduated where I went from working in the hospital setting to working with specialty practices in the Evansville area. I did some case management and was working on my master’s degree to teach. I officially transitioned into full-time teaching in 2007 and started at Ivy Tech.
Tell me about your path to becoming a nursing educator.
In the state of Indiana, you have to have, at minimum, a master’s of science in nursing. And for that degree, there are several tracks, nursing education being one of them. I got that in 2008 from USI and taught for eight or nine years before starting my doctoral program.
I got my doctorate in nursing practice at the American Sentinel University. The specialty track I did was nursing educational leadership. I completed that in 2019 and thought, I’m finally done with all my teaching. I’m going to find some hobbies and enjoy life. And then COVID hit. So, I’m still waiting for that pause.
In the mix of starting my teaching career at Ivy Tech, I did get my certification through the National League for Nursing to be a certified nurse educator. In addition to advancing degrees, a lot of nurses do additional certifications in their specialty areas. So that was one of my goals, and I did that before deciding to finally commit to getting my doctorate.
What made you decide to merge nursing with education?
I like the idea of working with people and training them to work not only at the bedside but also beyond the bedside. Training future leaders to get our profession on a better footing, especially right now.
We have a huge worry in nursing education because we have such a wave coming up this year and next year of educators who are due to retire. You read in papers and hear on TV that we don’t have enough nurses. Well, we’re even worse in terms of nurse educators. So, hopefully, we’re producing nurses who also have in mind how to pay it forward and train future nurses.
For me, I had a love of teaching. I grew up in a family of nurses and teachers, so it was a nice blend for me. Early in my career when I started teaching, it was also a nice home-life balance. I could have my summers off as a teacher and have that time with my daughter. But I’m almost 50, and I’m still doing homework, forever in school mode. When people say, you’ve got weekends, summers and holidays, I say, yeah but I’m still grading papers and answering emails.
There’s never an off switch, but I love it. I talk with my coworkers. It’s the thing that fills our cup. It gives us joy. It’s knowing it’s an immediate way to serve your community and more broadly serve the profession. We are serving even globally. We’ve got nurses who graduate from our programs who are overseas and serving their country in numerous ways. It’s just nice to know that we had a small part to play in all of that.
You teach undergraduates and graduate students. How do you stay on top of teaching practices with that variety of levels?
Nursing education is a specialty. It’s no different than a nurse practitioner staying on top of the latest and greatest in terms of research and best practices for their specialty. As a certified nurse educator, I have to have a certain number of hours every year to maintain that certification.
I always try to keep things fresh and look at best practices. We go to conferences and webinars, trying to make sure that we’re keeping things where they need to be. Students learn differently and what they need out of us is different than what I provided five years ago. Meeting each individual’s learning needs is really something you have to stay on top of. If you’re trying to be the best in what you do, that’s the commitment you make.
And then, of course, evaluate that, asking our students for feedback throughout the semester and at the end of courses and then making those changes. We want them to understand that in any role, it’s not just you as the employee who’s always being evaluated. You also need to seek feedback from others to help you grow as well.
What types of nursing students are going through programs right now?
Just over the last several years of teaching, the type of students that we’re working with has changed. It used to be, “I’ve always wanted to be a nurse. I want to serve.” That was what was guiding people into nursing. And not that we still don’t have that. But, like any industry, people come to work for pay and benefits. So, probably more in recent years, I’ve seen, “I’m coming into nursing because I know I’ll have job security.”
I do see excitement for learning. I don’t see that hesitation in encountering the next pandemic because there will be one. These students are probably coming in with their eyes more wide open than any other generation years back. We published a study a few weeks back on helping them learn strategies for developing resiliency while they’re in nursing school but more so as they approach the workforce.
They go into the hospitals, they see the staffing challenges and they see that staff are tired. That’s probably the harder challenge is talking with students and saying, yeah, but we’re going to help build teams and add more people to the work environment.
How do you feel about the state of nursing?
It is concerning. Indiana is not a state that is unionized, and that won’t be happening anytime soon. We’re a right-to-work state. But there’s a lot of movement in other states across the country with strikes. The core of those strikes is producing an environment that is safe and healthy for nurses.
We have statistics that are just scary for nurse violence with patients and their families and collateral bullying among other coworkers. It’s not a safe space like people think it is. So that part of the state of affairs is concerning.
The huge gap that we’re going to have in the number of nurses working not just at the bedside but also in teaching is concerning. We’ve got this baby boomer generation that is going to pose a huge strain on the services we can provide. Trying to rise to that challenge and produce enough students fast enough is really hard.
I was just looking a little while ago at a 2023 report that said in the state of Indiana we have 60 vacant nurse faculty positions. That’s across the state at the university level. It’s a hard gap to fill because the other challenge right now for nursing is pay. During COVID, there were some adjustments in pay. But for nurse educators, we’re graduating students who, upon graduation, are making more money than a nurse educator.
So drawing an experienced nurse from the hospital or an experienced nurse practitioner from a practice to come teach full time, there’s a huge gap. And It’s hard to produce more when you’re working with less.
What’s your vision for the future of nursing?
In terms of academia, nursing programs are like the cash cow of any college or university. We have that enrollment, we keep things flowing. But I would like to see more value placed on that experienced nurse coming from the bedside to education and supporting people who make that transition. Because there is a practice gap. Once you come from the bedside, you’ve got to learn best practices for teaching, evaluating and assessing.
We get these great faculty that come in from the hospitals, but then the mentoring aspect, getting them up to speed on teaching practices, that takes time. I would like to see funding focusing on bringing in the number of faculty we need and helping to retain them with benefits and training.
What does the 2023 Excellence in Teaching Award mean to you?
I was really surprised. The National League for Nursing is our national organization that’s all about supporting nursing education and growing the nursing workforce and a huge lobbying body for the profession nationally and even internationally. The Indiana League is the constituent league of the National League for Nursing.
ILN is made up of educators and those in clinical practice and hospital organizations throughout the state. So to get an award from peers across the state, it was an honor and exciting to be recognized for a lot of late nights of grading papers and trying to reach people in ways that meet their learning needs.
What advice do you have for someone who’s interested in nursing?
The best piece of advice for someone wanting to get into not just nursing but health care in general is to find ways to immerse yourself and get a sneak preview. Volunteer, shadow our hospital systems in town, St. Vincent’s and Deaconess. Another thing we have for high schoolers is the opportunity to take some nursing assistant classes and get dual credit for college.
The hardest work I’ve done is working as a nurse aide in a hospital. See if it’s something you can see yourself doing day in and day out. Making beds, bathing people, that’s nursing. Meeting needs like that. It’s hard for students to have to decide so early, even in middle school, what their interests might be. I hope to see our school corporations find ways to help students explore things early.
Nursing was not my first choice. When I went to UE, I was a physical therapy major. I walked across campus one day and thought, I don’t want to be in school for the next five or six years. I want to start working with patients now. So that’s how I switched to nursing. If I want to continue to advance, maybe I’ll be a nurse practitioner, maybe I’ll teach. Who knows? But for me, it was knowing I wanted to work with people and help care for people.