Speaker Spotlight: Nurse JAR
Source: Nurse JAR YouTube video on 2019 PearsonVue - Counts & Records Radial Pulse.
This week, the CNA Simulations team was fortunate enough to sit down over Zoom with October’s webinar speaker on Training Testable Skills, content creator, and nursing instruction trailblazer Julie Reynolds LVN, C-NM, QCP, also known as Nurse JAR. To hear directly from Nurse JAR about preparing and training students on testable CNA skills. It’s on Thursday, October 27, 2022 at 4 pm EDT.
We first met Julie Reynolds LVN in 2021 when CNA Simulations was still in its earliest phases. She found our website and contacted to us to learn more about the CNA simulation scenarios we were building for nurse aide students. Our Founder, Dr. Charlene Brown, recognized her face from her famous online CNA skills videos, and she signed on to become one of the company’s first nurse consultants! That’s how Nurse JAR contributed content for our first simulation scenario. We are thrilled to sit down to learn more about her work and her as a person.
Nurse JAR is based out of San Antonio, Texas, and has over a decade of instructional experience. In addition to her work in the classroom, she has become a trailblazer in her quest to create better-standardized resources that CNA instructors can use to teach their students. Some of her accomplishments in this regard include but are not limited to:
Her YouTube channel has over 33 thousand subscribers.
Her books “Nurse JAR's Nurse Aide Training Workbooks,” and “Nurse JAR’s Book of CNA Clinical Scenarios.”
Two original CNA Games that she created, including CNA Quest, which is viewable on her YouTube channel.
Below are some of the major takeaways from our interview with Nurse JAR:
Nurse JAR on what inspired her to create CNA skills videos:
“To give my students additional tools inside and outside the classroom…There was a lack of YouTube content in line with testing requirements, so it was an additional tool more specific to certification testing.”
The goals of her work:
“The goal is to give students a fun way to learn nursing theory and testable skills.”
The change she hopes to bring to the CNA Instructor Community:
“I have one main specific hope, and that is for all instructors to get on the same page. For not only what but also how to teach students. To start building a network of instructors.” Adding, “Instructors [including herself previously] have a difficult time deciding what video to use.”
The most common topics CNA instructors ask her about:
Improving CNA student engagement
Creative teaching strategies
Teaching/training testable skills
Structuring the classroom
Controlling the classroom environment
One piece of advice for other CNA instructors:
“Listen to your students, even when they are silent…silence is the most powerful form of communication. The tools I have made come from listening to my students.”
The most rewarding part of her work:
“Receiving emails, calls, texts, from candidates that passed [their CNA exams] because of my material…Knowing that I’m helping so many people that I haven’t met face-to-face.”
Some fun facts:
Nurse JAR is fluent in French and American Sign Language (ASL);
Her favorite color is yellow, and
She used to be a gymnast!
Her favorite movie genre:
“Horror”
who of everyone in the world, past or present, she would have a meal with given the opportunity:
“My Dad”
