UNMC College of Nursing 985330 NE Medical Center, Omaha, NE 68198-5330 Dr. Heidi Keeler, PhD, RN, P:402-559-6412 E:hkeeler@unmc.edu W: https://www.unmc.edu/cne/ ABSTRACT: The University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Nursing (UNMC CON) is engaged in a multi-year effort based upon the concept of modern apprenticeship using innovative, mobile technology and design to create an academy consisting of academic-clinical-community partnerships and an advocacy hub. This will underpin the development and implementation of a formal nurse clinical education training curriculum capitalizing on micro-learning sessions and just in time training for clinical nursing faculty and preceptors. To do this, several activities and deliverables are planned. A comprehensive needs assessment to identify the unique clinical preceptor landscape in the region, to include motivating factors and barriers, that will inform the vision and creation of standardized curriculum, recruitment and retention strategies, and supportive infrastructure for clinical precepting will be conducted. Then, using this information, a Preceptor Academy will be created to train and support clinical faculty/preceptors using innovative mobile technology, design, and approach which is both unique to the local need nurses and amenable to scaling to a regional and national level. This will allow for nurses across the region to customize what they need to be best prepared in their local area and practice. Next, relationships with existing and new academic-clinical-community partners will be enhanced to create new clinical faculty opportunities, assess clinical preceptor needs, address barriers to recruitment and retention, contribute to and enhance collective expertise, and harness communication networks to share Preceptor Academy opportunities and resources. To optimize the success of both new and current clinical faculty, new and existing relationships will be leveraged to implement new sup
port services to include promotion of resiliency and well-being as well as prevention of burnout. To assure that the articulated efforts are increasing the nursing workforce by recruiting, training, and producing skilled qualified clinical nursing faculty and nursing preceptors, a comprehensive evaluation plan will be developed and implemented. These aims will be achieved through the close collaboration of key stakeholders, initially across the state in its pilot phase, and then across HRSA Region 7, which consists of Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri. The funds awarded will be used to reserve time for stakeholders to determine how to adapt national best practices into the unique environment of the region. This will include the creation of a Preceptor Academy standardized curriculum that will not only produce just in time trainings for preceptors, but also focus on a mobile delivery system most used by preceptors in practice. This will be overseen by a team of faculty, expert staff, newly created clinical nurse liaison, clinical partners, and community collaborators. In addition, the stakeholder workgroup will use the funding to determine additional ways to reduce barriers to precepting, such as time, renumeration, stress and burnout, and lack of connection to preceptor peers or support systems. This award, requested as a rural preference in the amount of 1M per year over 4 years, is dedicated to building clinical preceptor capacity in region 7, and will create a firm foundation for community-academic-clinical partnerships well positioned to address current and future nursing workforce problems.