Facing transition--nurse clinician to nurse educator

The move from practice to academia has been looked at using a transition framework. As college and university-based nursing programs hire more part-time clinical faculty, they face the challenge of being proactive in the new educator's transition experience. The three phases of assimilation that take place in transition were described as preoccupation with the new role, a time of disruption where struggles between leaving the old and assimilating the new occur, and a final phase of integration of the transition (Schlossberg, 1984). The establishment of a plan to assist the new educator through the struggles in the middle phase of assimilation allow for a positive integration of the transition experience. On a personal level, I was very fortunate. As I made this transition myself, I recognized my need for mentoring and was able to find a senior faculty member whose practice model closely resembled my own. We were able to combine our separate strengths to better our clinical as well as academic goals. Despite this, the process of transition was still very real. In discussions with other part-time faculty, I found we all experienced the transition process at varying degrees based on the past experiences we brought with us. It was during that time of personal transition that I realized the need for a more conscious approach to this assimilation process. Additional nursing research is needed in several areas relating to the transition process.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)