Alumni help form future Marquette Nurse Practitioners through preceptorship

Nursing

Alumni help form future Marquette Nurse Practitioners through preceptorship

These advanced practice nurses graduated from Marquette - now they're mentoring their future co-workers.

Marquette nurse-midwifery alumna Brittany Froeming remembers occasionally feeling overwhelmed when she first walked the halls of her clinical rotation site as a student nurse midwife. She was expected to prepare patients, handle medical charting and hone her clinical skills without constant guidance, a process that came with a lot of difficult, novel situations.

When these situations arose, Froeming's preceptor would repeat the mantra, "Be the midwife," equally challenging and supporting her to become the practitioner she is today.

"I felt safe to learn and I was never made to feel stupid or like I was a lowly student," Froeming says. "My preceptors gave me so much grace and room to grow."

It's an experience Froeming now creates for Marquette students as a preceptor herself, and she's hardly the only one. Marquette Nursing guarantees that all students will be placed with a preceptor for their required clinical hours, which would not be possible without droves of advanced practice nurses agreeing to serve as mentors. Many of them are Marquette alumni.

"When you become a nurse, you take an oath to help those around you, and that includes the students who are going to be coming into professional practice," says Katie Alvarez, a nurse practitioner who graduated from Marquette and has precepted for nine years. "We know so much and have a platform to share that knowledge; we have a responsibility to do that."

To obtain a nurse practitioner degree from Marquette, students must spend at least 750 hours performing direct patient care in an 18-month period, which usually works out to at least 12 hours per week. This requirement, and others like it at programs across the country, creates a huge demand for advanced practice nurses who can oversee student work.

The ongoing health care worker shortage has contributed to a similar shortage of preceptors for advanced practice programs. Many nurse practitioners cite lack of time as a main culprit; too many patients and too few hours available to dedicate strictly to mentorship. However, some see taking on a preceptor as a way to relieve the problem instead of exacerbating it. Maryanne Scherer, another graduate of Marquette's nurse midwifery program, often saves time by having her student do prep work on some of her patients.

"You get to bring students up the way you would want them to perform when they're in your practice and they get experience with your clinical model," Scherer says.

While Marquette Nursing students are better prepared for the workforce than ever thanks to a state-of-the-art simulation lab, there are certain situations that APRNs will only know how to handle by confronting them in a clinical setting. Claudia Rodriguez, a 2014 graduate of the Adult Gerontology Primary Care Nurse Practitioner program, deals with lots of patients who have chronic health conditions. Understanding the social determinants of health and learning how to apply that knowledge is a skill best honed through working with a preceptor.

"It's important for students to learn and understand how to manage these health conditions, even if they decide they do not want to specialize in primary care," Rodriguez says. "They have to take what they've learned in their clinical experience and apply it to whatever their specialty ends up being."

Many nurse practitioners end up working with the students they once precepted. Scherer, who works at the Aurora Midwifery and Wellness Center, says that the past five hires on her unit all started there as student learners.

"I consider a preceptor relationship to be like an orientation for a student; it's a precursor to what their time as part of our practice is going to be like. Precepting is all about leaving space for them to develop professional skills and ask questions in a supportive environment," Scherer says.

Marquette Nursing lays out five common qualities that all its graduates should embody: advocacy for the vulnerable, critical thinking, courageous leadership, caring for the whole person and the championing of social justice. Alumni preceptorship reinforces those values for the next generation by providing a model of what they look like in a health care setting. Preceptors go further than just conveying information about the skills required to be an advanced practice nurse; they teach the principles that underpin those skills, which creates more nurse leaders.

"All the preceptors are committed to the students and to the broader nursing community; they want to see their students succeed," Rodriguez says. "Marquette Nurses make a difference no matter where they are in the world and this mentorship allows them to know how to do that."

If you are interested in becoming a nurse preceptor, reach out to Christine Glynn at [email protected] for more information.

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