The Midwest Clinical Instruction Regional Network has been crafted from a $4 million UNMC College of Nursing Health Resources and Services Administration grant.
The grant, led by Heidi Keeler, PhD, and titled “An Innovative States-Wide Nursing Workforce Clinical Preceptor Academy,” addresses multiple aims within a four-state region to prepare the nursing workforce.
Team members of the MCIRN recently were selected to present the results of their clinical education survey, which was sent to preceptors, stakeholders, and nurse practitioner students across the states of Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri, at the 50th annual National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculty conference in Baltimore.
The survey explored the participant’s perspective of the clinical education landscape regarding clinical site structure, process and culture; clinical site educator personnel attributes, knowledge and skills; clinical education communication and scheduling; student personal reflection on own knowledge, skills and work-life balance; incentives and barriers to precepting; and organizational barriers to precepting.
Major findings from the survey identified that preceptors are motivated to precept by altruism and giving back to the profession. Still, organizations should increase recognition efforts for preceptors while working through organizational barriers of preceptor scheduling and recruitment. Also, nurse practitioner students identified opportunities to improve orientation to clinical sites, electronic health record access and training while aligning their didactic and clinical rotations.
Next steps for the MCIRN include: continuing to develop the preceptor academy with basic and advanced precepting concepts; creating precepting training specific for RN and APRN’s; enhancing and creating relationships with existing and new academic-clinical-community partners; promoting resiliency and wellbeing in preceptors; and implementing an evaluation plan to assure the efforts are increasing the nursing workforce.
Interested in learning more about precepting? The MCIRN has opportunities for learning, networking, and content development. Faculty and students can participate in the following ways:
Contact MCIRN@unmc.edu for information regarding registration or for more information regarding these opportunities to participate.
Source – Nursing HRSA grant leads to regional clinical instruction network by Greg Forbes, UNMC College of Nursing on May 9, 2024
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This project is supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of an award totaling $3,995,519 with 0 percentage financed with non-governmental sources. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by HRSA, HHS, or the U.S. Government.
