Preparing Clinical Educators

This article reports on a review of the literature on clinical educators, on three focus groups in which health care professionals discussed topics related to clinical educators, and the steps taken to develop collaborative education. Clinical educators well-prepared in interdisciplinary collaboration are particularly important in geriatrics. The two emerging themes, skill development and environmental supports, guided the development of a conceptual model. It was concluded that a successful clinical educator requires discipline-specific knowledge and generic teaching skills, as well as environmental supports from both the clinical setting and the educational institution. Providing clinical educators with these skills and supports results in their being more proficient teachers, producing more capable health care students, and ultimately improving the quality of patient and client care, including older adults.