Nursing, healthcare and students have all changed. Nursing education, for the most part, has not.

Tanner states that clinical education, for the most part, has remained unchanged for 40 years.¹ What we have always done may not be what we should continue doing. It is time to change, but change should be based on best practices.

A major reason for basing teaching on best practices is to ensure the strategies faculty use to teach nursing are producing the expected outcomes. The teaching strategies used in the classroom, nursing laboratory and clinicals should be based on research and shown to provide the best instruction for the expected student outcomes.

This is a fairly new idea for nursing education, but one that is receiving attention, both from education and practice. The National League for Nursing (NLN), in its 2005 Position Statement, Transforming Nursing Education, called for nurse educators to question the assumptions and traditions on which they base their practice. Just as nursing practice is, and should be, based on best practice, so should nursing education.

In 2006, the National Council of State Boards of Nursing published its paper, Evidence-Based Nursing Education for Regulation. The NCSBN is conducting this research to discover best practices in nursing education to support its rules and regulations as applied to nursing programs. This paper is the result of 4 years of research identifying best practice in nursing education for preparing new nurses; it is only the beginning.

Nursing faculty would be wise to monitor the research and recommendations for best practices in nursing education. Faculty can read the Nursing Education Perspectives from the NLN, monitor the NCSBN Web site (www.ncsbn.org) for the latest research and peruse nursing education journals for integrative reviews that provide best practice guidelines. The saying, "In God we trust. All others must bring the data!" is the mantra for today's nurse educators.²

Linda Caputi is professor of nursing at College of DuPage, Glen Ellyn, IL.

References
1. Tanner, C. (2006). The next transformation: Clinical education. Journal of Nursing Education, 45(4), 99-100.
2. Melnyk, B.M. (2005). Igniting evidence-based practice in clinical and educational settings. Plenary address at Sigma Theta Tau International's 16th International Nursing Research Congress, Kona, Hawaii.