The leap to faculty in the time of COVID19

Nurses are essential workers, particularly in a pandemic. Increasingly complex patients and an ever-changing health care environment are a few of the challenges that nursing faculty have to prepare novice nurses for, now more than ever, but it is proving difficult due to the limited number of nursing faculty. In order to continue to prepare nurses for practice, schools of nursing are looking for ways to recruit and retain new faculty. The transition from clinician to academia is challenging due to anxiety related to new expectations, adjusting socially into a new environment, and loss of a previous identity as a clinician; however, for faculty hired during the COVID19 pandemic, these challenges have been amplified due to the loss of learning through observation and social interactions. The idea that learning is a cognitive process that takes place in a social context is rooted in Albert Bandura's Social Learning Theory. This paper gives voice to two novice faculty who undertook the challenge of starting a ranked faculty role while working remotely during the COVID19 pandemic. Due to the increased likelihood of another pandemic occurring in the relative near future due to globalization; the second role of this paper is to propose measures for faculty enculturation, based on the Social Learning Theory, which can be implemented safely from home. Improved nursing recruitment into academia, and retainment, will improve the education of future nurses facing the challenges of modern healthcare.