Blog

  • April Dobroth, FNP, MSN FNU Graduate

    April Dobroth always pictured herself as a family nurse practitioner. So, when the time came, she made the choice to return to school to pursue the Master of Science in Nursing degree. April graduated from Frontier Nursing University in 2011. As a family nurse practitioner, April provides high quality, compassionate and culturally sensitive health care to the rural community she serves. She chose FNU based on her love of the mission and of the university history. April says that, because of her close philosophical alignment with FNU, she knew she had found her academic home. Today, she is living her dream on a daily basis, providing much needed health care services to the people of the Santo Domingo Pueblo.

    Providing services to a community of approximately 5,000 of the Santo Domingo Pueblo Tribe as well as other tribes of the greater New Mexico area has made a pivotal difference to the native community. The Kewa Pueblo Health Clinic provides much needed access to a wide variety of medical services in a medical home model of care. Services include medical care, mental health services, hyperbaric treatment, dialysis, public health nursing and dental services. Transportation to and from the clinic is provided daily to those in need. Plans are in the works to expand care to an open access model which will incorporate home visits, extended hours of care and school based services.

    While April is clearly keeping Mary Breckinridge’s dream of serving “wide neighborhoods” alive in New Mexico, part of her heart has been left in Hyden. She says, “The Frontier network has always felt like more of a family to me with the home being Hyden, Ky., and stretching to some of the farthest regions of the United States.” As an alumnus she has remained in contact with many of her classmates and professors whom she looks to for support, expertise and knowledge.

    However, April is keeping up her own level of expertise and knowledge according to her many certifications and awards. She holds certifications from the AANP as a Family Nurse, Practitioner and UNM Project ECHO certification in the treatment of Hepatitis C, 12 Lead ECG certification and Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (pediatric and adult). Additionally, April has advanced training in substance abuse, traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic treatment. She is an instructor in Basic Life Support, Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support, Neonatal Resuscitation, Trauma Nurse Core Course, and has Emergency Nursing Pediatric Certification.

    April is a member of the Sigma Theta Tau Honor Society, AANP member, AANP Legislative Committee Member, New Mexico Nurse Practitioners Council Member and American Holistic Nurses Association member. She has been Employee of the Month at the NM State Penitentiary (2012) and at the Kenwa Pueblo Health Center (2013). She has also been the recipient of the outstanding clinical preceptor award for the year at Colorado Health Science Center (2001). 

  • Linda Jacobsen, CNM, CFNP, MPH, FNU Graduate

    From serving as a Peace Corps nurse in Africa to teaching nursing and midwifery in Tanzania to serving as Deputy Chief Nursing Officer for Seed Global Health, Linda Jacobsen, CNM, CFNP, MPH is a true example of taking the passion of caring for women and families to communities around the globe.

    Linda Jacobsen recently returned to the U.S. after serving for a year teaching nursing and midwifery in Tanzania as part of the inaugural class of the Global Health Service Partnership (GHSP) volunteers. The GHSP program, a unique public-private partnership between the U.S. Peace Corps, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), and Seed Global Health, places U.S. physicians and nurses on faculties at medical and nursing schools in Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda, to support educational capacity development aimed at long-term health system strengthening. Since ending her service, Linda has become a Deputy Chief Nursing Officer for Seed Global Health in which she helps to recruit and train new nursing volunteers for service.

    While Linda was a Peace Corps nurse in Africa in the late 1970s, she experienced a crisis when delivering pre-term twins, which motivated her to study midwifery. She then sought out other midwives who worked abroad, and found that many studied and served with Frontier Nursing Service (FNS) and were trained to provide comprehensive care. So Linda returned to the US and continued her education in a cohort of ten nurse-midwives who trained and served with FNS in 1983-1984. Three graduates from her class were involved in international nursing and continue to support each other in their leadership roles. Leaders like Kitty Ernst and FNS Dean, Ruth Stevens, fostered professionalism and trained the students to meet challenges successfully, which became a life-long habit of Linda’s.

    Linda and her classmates forged leadership roles wherever they served in their careers. After training at FNS and earning her masters at University of Washington School of Public Health, Linda served in U.S. public health programs, primarily in rural and underserved areas in the state of Washington, while she raised a family. She has been a clinician, family planning consultant, public health program manager, clinical preceptor and implemented a project that integrated HIV screening in Title X family planning clinics.

    When their children left for college, Linda and her husband searched for an opportunity to serve together in Africa and discovered the GHSP program. As Seed Global Health’s Deputy Chief Nursing Officer, she returned to Tanzania in November 2014 to mentor current GHSP volunteers serving in the field. In Tanzania, nurses train at the diploma or bachelors level and learn midwifery in their standard nursing program.

    Remembering her years at Frontier, Linda recalled working from district centers, visiting families in log cabins, and escorting sick patients from remote areas as part of ambulance transport teams. She remembers the hospitality and warm manners of the people in the Kentucky mountain communities and found that similarly, people in Tanzania are also very gracious and reach out to form relationships with each other. Due to a lack of resources, Tanzanian patients tend to come for care more acutely ill than rural U.S. patients. Women are especially vulnerable; only about half those who are pregnant actually make the targeted four prenatal visits, and many are not tested for HIV because they don’t have access to testing facilities.

    Trained healthcare workers in Tanzania are in short supply, and even medical centers must ration resources. However, Linda was encouraged to see, when observing student presentations in a village, that the students engaged with the villagers and leaders about how their needs might be addressed and that the villagers responded by bringing the nurses food. There, as in Kentucky, addressing patient and rural community needs at the local level is vital to promote overall health. Linda is proud to be a FNU graduate with international experience, and pointed out that FNU graduates are willing to make difference where there are huge needs for health care. 

  • Student Spotlight: Laura Giles, BSN, RN

    At the heart of Frontier Nursing University is a talented and diverse community of faculty, students, alumni and preceptors. Spotlight blogs feature members of our FNU community that are focused on the mission of educating nurse-midwives and nurse practitioners to deliver quality health care to underserved and rural populations.

    While some may assume the term “distance education” implies a gap between educators and students, FNU student Laura Giles disagrees. Laura was recently interviewed by The Alaska Nurse, which surveyed her distance education experience with FNU.

    In the article, “A 21st Century Approach to Nursing Education” by Taylor DiBiasco, B.Ed., Laura explains that she actually feels more connected to her instructors at FNU than in her traditional undergrad degree.

    According to Laura, the online aspect of education makes it easier for instructors to check-in on students with an individualized approach via email than that of the traditional classroom format, which has a short amount of allotted time.

    FNU has allowed Laura to continue working full-time while pursuing her masters and becoming a certified nurse-midwife. 

    Her dream to help in women’s health began as a teenager after a bad experience with a healthcare provider. According to Laura, the nurse didn’t take a second to explain anything about her visit and as a terrified teenager, she decided that if she were ever in that position she would make sure to be more caring.

    “I strive to educate and inform the women I care for to make sure they understand exactly what they are going through and what their options are,” said Laura.

    Laura obtained her Bachelors of Science in Psychology from Portland State University and her Bachelors of Science in Nursing from Oregon Health Science University. She has more than five years of experience as an RN. She is currently a nurse in the ER at Providence Alaska Medical Center pursing an MSN degree at FNU to become a certified nurse-midwife.

    To read the full article in The Alaska Nurse, go here and scroll to page 18.

  • Meet our New Clinical Directors: Dr. Irma Jordan and Dr. Jane Houston

    Frontier Nursing University is excited to have recently added two new clinical directors to our faculty. Dr. Irma Jordan is joining FNU as the Clinical Director of Family Nursing and Dr. Jane Houston is serving as the Clinical Director of Midwifery and Women’s Health.  In these roles, Dr. Jordan and Dr. Houston will be in responsible for the oversight and development of the clinical portion of the programs.

    See below more information on our new clinical directors.

    Irma Jordan, DNP, APRN, FNP/PMHNP-BC, FAANPDr. Irma Jordan

    Dr. Jordan has dual certification as a family and psychiatric nurse practitioner and has served as faculty in both programs. In addition to her faculty role, Dr. Jordan has practiced as a Nurse Practitioner since 1998 in a variety of primary care and community mental health clinics. Her particular area of interest is integration of mental health care into the primary care clinic.

    Dr. Jordan is active in multiple national organizations, and in 2012, Dr. Jordan was recognized for her contributions and commitment to the nurse practitioner profession by the American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP) and inducted as Fellow in the Academy. In 2014, Dr. Jordan received the AANP Tennessee State Award for Nurse Practitioner Excellence, and in 2015, the Tennessee American Psychiatric Nurses Association Excellence in Teaching Award.

    Jane Frances Houston DNP, CNM, ARNP, RM

    Dr. Houston began her nursing and midwifery education in Scotland where she became a registered general nurse with a bachelor’s degree and completed her diploma in midwifery in 1992 to become a Registered Nurse-Midwife.

    Dr. Houston has always felt called to the profession of nurse-midwifery in particular. She has delivered over 2000 babies on 4 continents, and each birth has been very special to her.

    Dr. Houston entered graduate school at University of Florida in 2001 and completed her MSN studies so she would be able to provide nurse-midwifery care in Gainesville, Florida.  Jane was in the first DNP class at University of Florida, graduating in 2009, and continued her career in education becoming Director of Midwifery there in 2011.

  • Alumni Spotlight: Jualeah Early

    2008 Frontier Nursing University graduate, Jualeah Early, CNM, MSN found her current job with Baby & Co. while she was on a mission—as somewhat of a spy.

    As the wife of a basketball coach, Jualeah had gotten used to the moving process and the job-hunting that comes along with it. When she ended up in North Carolina, she was quickly offered a job with a physician-midwife practice, and although the office was a good distance away from her home, she accepted.

    When a new birth center opened in her own town, her employers asked Jualeah to attend its open house to scope the new competition. At the Baby & Co. open house, Jualeah encountered fellow FNU graduate Tracy Ryan, CNM, who is the clinical director for all Baby & Co. sites. While Jualeah listened to Tracy talk about the center’s mission, Jualeah couldn’t help but get excited as she realized her passion strongly aligned with that of Baby & Co.

    It wasn’t long before Jualeah joined the Baby & Co. practice, finally fulfilling her dream of working as a nurse-midwife in a birth center.

    Jualeah had always known she wanted to be a nurse-midwife. She first heard about FNU while her husband was a coach in Ohio in the 1990s. She began thinking about pursuing her dream of becoming a nurse-midwife when she moved to Alabama, but other nurses discouraged her from pursuing midwifery. She was told there were no nurse-midwives in Alabama and she wouldn’t be able to get a job. Soon after, the couple moved to Louisiana where she was told the same thing. Even so, her passion didn’t waver, and she decided to defy all odds and go for it, enrolling in FNU.

    After graduating in 2008, she began her work as a nurse-midwife working with a physician as an independent practitioner. She worked under the same arrangement in both South Carolina and North Carolina before finally finding Baby & Co., which allowed her to work in a birth center, as she truly desired.

    According to Jualeah, FNU’s distance-learning model was pivotal in her ability to become a nurse-midwife.

    We are proud to have alumni like Jualeah representing FNU every day as they deliver quality healthcare to underserved populations.

    Keep up the good work, Jualeah!

  • Chasity Frakes, CFNP Class 84, FNU Graduate

    Chasity Frakes, CFNP believes FNU enabled her to realize her dream of making home visits. The path to her dream was a series of surprises. 

    Chasity graduated recently and believes FNU enabled her to realize her dream–making home visits. The path to her dream was a series of surprises. Chasity earned her BSN from University of Louisville and worked for six months as an RN in a hospital in Louisville, Ky., until her husband got a new job and they relocated to Berea, Ky. There, she enrolled in the FNU master’s FNP program. Chasity started clinical training in women’s health and midwifery with an FNU alum; the last day of her rotation, on February 1, 2013, her father was diagnosed with lung cancer. Chasity was able to go home to nurse her father and to be with him during the last weeks of his life because her final clinical training was delayed for two months by FNU paperwork required for her preceptor arrangements with rural health clinic in Mt. Vernon, Ky.

    Chasity lived in Berea for two years before she graduated from FNU and finished clinical training at Rockcastle Family Wellness clinic, which is affiliated with a small hospital with an acute care unit. She applied to work for the Rockcastle system, which had only one job open: a position to begin a home visit program staffed by an FNP. Chasity would visit patients in their homes after they were discharged from the hospital’s acute care unit and would also make home visits for clinic patients. Chasity assumed protocols for the program would already be defined but was challenged to design the protocol for the program—great experience for a new graduate. Mt. Vernon is a small town; many of the employees and patients and their families—of the hospital and its associated clinic where Chasity’s practice is based—all know everyone else. Chasity had to make friends with the entire county at once.

    Chasity found the stories about Mary Breckenridge’s Frontier Nursing Service were a great introduction for patients who had no experience with home visits, only she arrives in a Camry instead of on a horse. Many elderly patients who take medication for chronic conditions must meet Medicare requirements for a medical visit every 90 days but have challenges with access to transportation to attend office visits. Chasity’s visits reduce the periodic ‘trips to the clinic.’ She loves the care and concern for everyone she experiences as a part of Rockcastle’s system. Chasity keeps clinic hours one weekday and Saturday mornings to get experience she will need to precept FNU students.

    She recently opened an afternoon Saturday Acute Care Clinic to reduce trips out of town or to the emergency room. The home visit program impacts the community by reducing Medicare fines to Rockcastle for readmissions from their acute care discharged patients—money remaining in the hospital’s patient care system, which benefits the medical facility, the community, and the patient.

     

  • Celebrate National Midwifery Week by Joining FNU’s 2015 Digital Summit

    October 4-10, 2015 is National Midwifery Week and one of the ways Frontier is celebrating is by hosting an exciting digital summit dedicated to nurse-midwifery and collaborative care. We hope you’ll join us!

    The event, Today’s Nurse-Midwives: Creating a Collaborative Community of Care, will bring together a number of industry leaders to explore the latest in high quality team health care. With a focus on collaboration, we’ll be discussing several topics, including:

    • Two live-streamed sessions from the American Association of Birth Centers Birth Institute
      • Building Bridges from Birth Center to Hospital: Transfer and Collaboration
      • Optimizing Collaboration in the Healthcare Team
    • Midwifery Policy Issues – Why Change is Needed Now
    • Making Change Happen with the Consumer as the Center of the Team

    You can join the conversation from wherever you are! There will be one to two sessions per day during National Midwifery Week, Oct. 4-10. All sessions are free and easy to join. For our full 2015 Digital Summit schedule, go to Frontier.edu/MidwiferyWeek.

    Ranked as the #1 Nurse-Midwifery program in the United States by U.S. News & World Report, FNU is passionate about educating nurse-midwives to serve women and families in all communities, especially rural and underserved areas.

    To learn more about FNU and the programs and degrees offered, visit us here. 

  • Preceptor Spotlight: Jessica Nagel, CNM

    At the heart of Frontier Nursing University is a talented and diverse community of students, alumni, faculty, staff, Couriers and preceptors. Spotlight blogs feature members of our FNU community that are focused on the mission of educating nurse-midwives and nurse practitioners to deliver quality health care to underserved and rural populations.

    We are delighted to announce Jessica Nagel, CNM, of Davis, CA as this summer’s featured preceptor. Ms. Nagel, CNEP 47 and a 2008 graduate of Frontier, is a full scope nurse-midwife at Sutter West Women’s Health and Sutter Davis Hospital. The patient population in this semi-rural community outside of Sacramento is very diverse. In addition, the Sutter Davis midwives share call with the Davis Community Clinic which is a Federally Qualified Health Center and serves a diverse, low-income, and uninsured/underinsured patient population. Michelle Walker, recent CNEP 99 graduate, enthusiastically nominated her former preceptor and praises her as committed to helping student nurse-midwives have a thorough, hands-on clinical experience [by] allowing her students to jump right in and learn by doing.

    Ms. Nagel and other Sutter Davis midwives were recently featured in the new documentary, “The Mama Sherpas” about the growing movement of collaborative care between physicians and midwives. Ms. Nagel narrates the trailer and a quick shot of her working with a collaborative OB can be seen at the one minute mark. FNU is proud to call Ms. Nagel one of our graduates and we appreciate the good work she does on behalf of mothers and families.

    Ms. Nagel will receive a Starbucks giftcard as a small token of our appreciation for her being a great preceptor.

     

Request Information Apply Give Now