Summary
Hannah Winder, MSN, RN, is a Lecturer II at the Orvis School of Nursing at the University of Nevada, Reno. She teaches undergraduate nursing students in both didactic and clinical settings. Winder is an alumna of the University of Nevada, Reno, earning her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the Orvis School of Nursing in 2016. She began her nursing career at Renown South Meadows Medical Center on the Telemetry unit. In her role at South Meadows, she gained extensive experience mentoring new graduate nurses, becoming a charge RN, and acting as an ambassador for the EPIC charting system and for Infection Prevention. She then transitioned to Renown Regional Medical Center in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit, where she developed a passion for and expertise in critical care.
Winder has also worked in Surgical Preadmission Surgery Screening, where she delved into the world of peri-operative nursing, focusing on patient education and pre-screening to ensure safe surgical procedures. In this role, she developed several workflow documents and helped improve processes within the department. She later transitioned to outpatient Specialty Infusion, where she traveled all around the community, including Reno, Sparks, Incline Village, Stead, Dayton, Fallon, Carson City, Minden, and Gardnerville, providing specialty care to patients with autoimmune disease, myasthenia gravis, chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, pulmonary hypertension, and antiphospholipid syndromes.
Winder's most recent experience at the bedside was in the Critical Care Float Pool at Northern Nevada and Northern Nevada Sierra Medical Centers. In this position, she worked in ICUs, medical/surgical, telemetry, pre-op, and PACU at both facilities, fulfilling staffing needs and providing flexibility to support the various units. Additionally, Winder worked alongside the Nursing Education team and the Director of Education, collaborating to create staff education and in-services.
In 2023, Winder began teaching clinical rotations as a Letter of Appointment (LOA) Faculty at the Orvis School of Nursing while completing her Master of Science in Nursing. She has taught clinicals in facilities throughout the community and at multiple levels of the program since beginning her career in nursing education, and as of 2025, has become a full-time faculty member at Orvis. She has contributed to undergraduate nursing education through classroom teaching, clinical education, and the development of gamified and innovative learning experiences that put an emphasis on developing clinical judgement, critical thinking, and building upon foundational knowledge. She has contributed to curriculum development, participating in the curriculum committee and collaborating with other faculty to restructure and reorganize Pathophysiology and Pharmacology I & II to better align with principles of adult pedagogy and active learning.
Teaching philosophy
"The power to learn is present in everyone's soul." -Socrates, in Plato's Cave Allegory in the Republic
Winder's teaching philosophy can be summarized by "you know more than you think you know," which acknowledges students' inherent knowledge and empowers them to utilize their foundational skills to adapt to more complex situations. Constructivism and Gestalt psychology drive her teaching philosophy, as she believes that students’ experiences shape their learning, and they are actively constructing new mental frameworks atop foundational constructs to fortify their knowledge and conceptualize the bigger picture. Her philosophy also recognizes that the educator does not simply disseminate information to the students but instead engages with them and challenges them to come to their own conclusions and make connections to what they already know. Typically, this is something she does via Socratic questioning. Additionally, her philosophy is rooted in humanism and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Winder truly believes that the upper half of Maslow’s pyramid, where esteem and self-actualization lie, or in the context of education, learning at the higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy, cannot be achieved unless the environment is conducive to supporting students’ basic human needs. Thus, students should be viewed holistically (much like patients), and the environment should be sculpted so they feel safe to learn, they are valued and respected in the process, and their basic needs and feelings as human beings are recognized.
Scholarly interests
- Gamification in Nursing Education
- Virtual Escape Rooms
- Active Learning Strategies
- Adult Pedagogy
- Therapeutic Communication
- Acute Adult Care
- Critical Care/Intensive Care
- Telemetry Nursing
Courses taught
- NURS 318- Nursing Fundamentals Practicum
- NURS 318L-Nursing Fundamentals Lab
- NURS 346- Nursing Care of the Individual 1 Practicum
- NURS 331- Pathophysiology and Pharmacology I
- NURS 332- Pathophysiology and Pharmacology II
- NURS 454- Nursing Care of the Individual III Practicum
- NURS 454L- Nursing Care of the Individual III Lab
- NURS 465- Adult Health Geriatric Medical Surgical Practicum
- NURS 483- Clinical Practicum Immersion
Publications and presentations
- Co-presenter at Nurse Educators in the Rockies (2026)-- Plotting the Course: Converting Traditional Learning Tasks into Learning Adventures
- Guest on Lippincott's "The Spark" podcast talking about gamification in nursing education- episode in progress
- Featured in a social media video interview and presentation on virtual escape rooms as an innovative teaching strategy
- Featured in Nevada Today article, "Nursing students put their knowledge to the test through virtual escape rooms"
Education
- Master of Science in Nursing (MSN), Nursing Education, University of Nevada, Reno, Orvis School of Nursing, 2024
- Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN), University of Nevada, Reno, Orvis School of Nursing, 2016
Professional certifications
- Registered Nurse (RN), Nevada
- Basic Life Support (BLS) Provider, American Heart Association
- Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) Provider, American Heart Association
Awards
- OSN Rising Star Award, Orvis School of Nursing (2026)
- Navy Dedication to Nursing Award, Orvis School of Nursing (2024)
- Dean's Award for Academic Excellence, Orvis School of Nursing (2024)