Nurses, just like other professionals, develop knowledge through training. Therefore, nurse educators play an essential role in helping nurses to develop necessary skills. They assist nurse learners in overcoming the challenge of knowledge and experience gap, which is common among new nurses (Miligi, Selim, Salem, & Prince, 2019). Although nurse educators support nurses to develop various skills, they should include practical approaches that develop the ability to identify knowledge gaps to improve care delivery.
Nurse educators should take the necessary steps to train nurses to identify gaps in knowledge. They should teach nursing students to understand that nursing is a scientific profession (Safazadeh, Irajpour, Alimohammadi, & Haghani, 2018). Hence, nurses should learn to consider it a theory and art of delivery. As well, they should learn how to generate and use scientific knowledge when delivering care. In the process of creating awareness, they will learn to identify gaps that require additional research. Another step is training them to identify problems in nursing and find solutions through empirical research. By performing their scientific explorations on nursing issues, they can identify knowledge gaps and bridge them through effective interventions. Besides training on the way to gather evidence, they should learn to use the knowledge in practice. Nursing knowledge is essential to both providers and patients once translated to practice (Miligi, Selim, Salem, & Prince, 2019). Through such steps, they will learn to recognize gaps and bridge them to improve the quality of care offered to patients.
Nurse educators support the improvement of care. They play the role by training nurses to develop various skills, including identification of the knowledge gap. They support the achievement of this ability by learning critical approaches to conducting research and translating knowledge into practice.