Frontier Nursing University’s Clinical Outreach and Placement team is available to help students throughout their clinical program. Clinical Outreach and Placement Director Stephanie Boyd leads a team that includes three clinical advisors and a clinical services coordinator. The unit aids students by providing assistance and resources for locating clinical sites. It also provides support and customer service to preceptors, answering their questions and troubleshooting challenging situations.
The Clinical Outreach and Placement unit encourages students to be proactive and creative in their search for clinical sites. Sharing tips and success stories, they hope to inspire students to take the initiative and get an early start on identifying a clinical site.
“Students have a dedicated team of staff and faculty who work with them every step of the way,” Boyd said. “The majority of our students will tell you that talking about the clinical site identification process earlier and more often is such a benefit to them.”
The success of early planning with students might also be part of the solution to identify and create an even larger network of preceptors. Boyd’s team, which monitors a nationwide preceptor database, is particularly focused on increasing the number of FNU alumni who share their knowledge by precepting Frontier students. The process to do so began by developing the infrastructure, which includes Clinical Services Coordinator Brittany Bachman, who provides one-on-one support to preceptors, helping them navigate the process of precepting.
FNU preceptors are surveyed annually to gain insight into their experience precepting a Frontier student. Cumulative data, along with individual narrative responses, help Boyd and her team identify areas of improvement. The survey results, which are overwhelmingly positive, also serve as an additional way to promote and encourage potential preceptors who might have reservations about the time, process, or overall experience of precepting.
In addition to recruiting FNU alumni to become preceptors, the university is also giving added attention to a grassroots effort to encourage students to think about giving back after they graduate. Giving back can take many forms, including monetary gifts or, in the case of precepting, gifts of time and expertise. Graduates are eligible to precept one year after their graduation date.
“FNU students know the importance of having great preceptors to help train and mentor them,” said FNU alumna Kendra Faucett, DNP, CNM, CNE, FACNM. “As alumni, sharing their time and expertise through precepting is incredibly rewarding.”
The primary reward comes in the form of helping students learn and develop their skills, of course, but a fun secondary reward is the Featured Preceptor of the Term recognition. Each term, Boyd’s team selects a preceptor to recognize based on nominations from students and faculty.
Whether assisting students or preceptors, the key element in the work of the Clinical Outreach and Placement team is communication. Team members manage booths at national nurse practitioner and nurse-midwifery conferences where they engage and inform potential preceptors. The team also plans to start sending quarterly e-newsletters to active preceptors as a means to keep the lines of communication open and to share key information with those preceptors.
“The majority of our preceptors tell us they precept because they want to give back to their profession,” Boyd said. “The survey responses indicate preceptors feel very supported by FNU. As we increasingly share this information, I am confident that our alumni will want to pay it forward to the next generation of students by answering the call to precept as soon as they are eligible.”
Frontier Nursing University’s Department of Clinical Outreach and Placement strives to serve both students and their preceptors. All preceptors are surveyed by FNU to learn about their experience precepting a Frontier student and to learn how to create the best possible experience for all parties involved. A total of 746 preceptors responded to FNU’s 2022 survey.
This is what they had to say about their experience as preceptors for FNU students:
- When asked how satisfied they were with their experience serving as a Preceptor for an FNU student, nearly 60 percent of respondents said “very satisfied” and nearly 40 percent said “satisfied.”
- When asked how well-prepared the FNU student was when they began their clinical experience, over 40 percent of respondents said they “exceeded expectations” and about half of the respondents said they “met expectations.”
- When asked whether or not they felt supported by FNU if they have concerns or issues while precepting, about 95 percent of respondents said yes.
- When asked if they found the process of setting up their Preceptor Profile information easy to understand, about 95 percent of respondents said yes.
- When asked how likely they were to serve as a preceptor for an FNU student again, nearly 80 percent of respondents said “likely.”
Visit this link on our website to learn more about becoming a preceptor.
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Carrie Belin is an experienced board-certified Family Nurse Practitioner and a graduate of the Johns Hopkins DNP program, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Georgetown University School of Nursing, and Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. She has also completed fellowships at Georgetown and the University of California Irvine.
Angie has been a full-scope midwife since 2009. She has experience in various birth settings including home, hospital, and birth centers. She is committed to integrating the midwifery model of care in the US. She completed her master’s degree in nurse-midwifery at Frontier Nursing University (FNU) and her Doctorate at Johns Hopkins University. She currently serves as the midwifery clinical faculty at FNU. Angie is motivated by the desire to improve the quality of healthcare and has led quality improvement projects on skin-to-skin implementation, labor induction, and improving transfer of care practices between hospital and community midwives. In 2017, she created a short film on skin-to-skin called 
Justin C. Daily, BSN, RN, has ten years of experience in nursing. At the start of his nursing career, Justin worked as a floor nurse on the oncology floor at St. Francis. He then spent two years as the Director of Nursing in a small rural Kansas hospital before returning to St. Francis and the oncology unit. He has been in his current position as the Chemo Nurse Educator for the past four years. He earned an Associate in Nurse from Hutchinson Community College and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Bethel College.
Brandy Jackson serves as the Director of Undergraduate Nursing Programs and Assistant Educator at Wichita State University and Co-Director of Access in Nursing. Brandy is a seasoned educator with over 15 years of experience. Before entering academia, Brandy served in Hospital-based leadership and Critical Care Staff nurse roles. Brandy is passionate about equity in nursing education with a focus on individuals with disabilities. Her current research interests include accommodations of nursing students with disabilities in clinical learning environments and breaking down barriers for historically unrepresented individuals to enter the nursing profession. Brandy is also actively engaged in Interprofessional Education development, creating IPE opportunities for faculty and students at Wichita State. Brandy is an active member of Wichita Women for Good and Soroptimist, with the goal to empower women and girls. Brandy is a TeamSTEPPS master trainer. She received the DASIY Award for Extraordinary Nursing Faculty in 2019 at Wichita State University. 
Dr. Sabrina Ali Jamal-Eddine is an Arab-disabled queer woman of color with a PhD in Nursing and an interdisciplinary certificate in Disability Ethics from the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). Dr. Jamal-Eddine’s doctoral research explored spoken word poetry as a form of critical narrative pedagogy to educate nursing students about disability, ableism, and disability justice. Dr. Jamal-Eddine now serves as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in UIC’s Department of Disability and Human Development and serves on the Board of Directors of the National Organization of Nurses with Disabilities (NOND). During her doctoral program, Sabrina served as a Summer Fellow at a residential National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) Summer Institute at Arizona State University (2023), a summer fellow at Andrew W. Mellon’s National Humanities Without Walls program at University of Michigan (2022), a Summer Research Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Othering & Belonging Institute (2021), and an Illinois Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and related Disabilities (LEND) trainee (2019-2020).
Vanessa Cameron works for Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nursing Education & Professional Development. She is also attending George Washington University and progressing towards a PhD in Nursing with an emphasis on ableism in nursing. After becoming disabled in April 2021, Vanessa’s worldview and perspective changed, and a recognition of the ableism present within healthcare and within the culture of nursing was apparent. She has been working since that time to provide educational foundations for nurses about disability and ableism, provide support for fellow disabled nursing colleagues, and advocate for the disabled community within healthcare settings to reduce disparities.
Dr. Lucinda Canty is a certified nurse-midwife, Associate Professor of Nursing, and Director of the Seedworks Health Equity in Nursing Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Columbia University, a master’s degree from Yale University, specializing in nurse-midwifery, and a PhD from the University of Connecticut. Dr. Canty has provided reproductive health care for over 29 years. Her research interests include the prevention of maternal mortality and severe maternal morbidity, reducing racial and ethnic health disparities in reproductive health, promoting diversity in nursing, and eliminating racism in nursing and midwifery.
Dr. Lisa Meeks is a distinguished scholar and leader whose unwavering commitment to inclusivity and excellence has significantly influenced the landscape of health professions education and accessibility. She is the founder and executive director of the DocsWithDisabilities Initiative and holds appointments as an Associate Professor in the Departments of Learning Health Sciences and Family Medicine at the University of Michigan.
Dr. Nikia Grayson, DNP, MSN, MPH, MA, CNM, FNP-C, FACNM (she/her) is a trailblazing force in reproductive justice, blending her expertise as a public health activist, anthropologist, and family nurse-midwife to champion the rights and health of underserved communities. Graduating with distinction from Howard University, Nikia holds a bachelor’s degree in communications and a master’s degree in public health. Her academic journey also led her to the University of Memphis, where she earned a master’s in medical anthropology, and the University of Tennessee, where she achieved both a master’s in nursing and a doctorate in nursing practice. Complementing her extensive education, she completed a post-master’s certificate in midwifery at Frontier Nursing University.
Dr. Tia Brown McNair is the Vice President in the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Student Success and Executive Director for the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) Campus Centers at the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) in Washington, DC. She oversees both funded projects and AAC&U’s continuing programs on equity, inclusive excellence, high-impact practices, and student success. McNair directs AAC&U’s Summer Institutes on High-Impact Practices and Student Success, and TRHT Campus Centers and serves as the project director for several AAC&U initiatives, including the development of a TRHT-focused campus climate toolkit. She is the lead author of From Equity Talk to Equity Walk: Expanding Practitioner Knowledge for Racial Justice in Higher Education (January 2020) and Becoming a Student-Ready College: A New Culture of Leadership for Student Success (July 2016 and August 2022 Second edition).