Community Health Outside the Exam Room: Extracurricular Learning to Augment Nurse Practitioner Student Practice Readiness.

BACKGROUND: The curricular requirements of nurse practitioner (NP) programs are well established. NP students' clinical practicums provide a context for the extracurricular acquisition of administrative, operational, and systems-focused NP skills. PROBLEM: Acquisition of extracurricular NP skills is variable and highly dependent on a student's clinical placements. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated this variability by limiting students' access to traditional clinical rotations. APPROACH: With our practice partners, we inventoried the behaviors that are associated with new graduate NP readiness for practice in community health centers. We then developed an extracurricular seminar series to develop these behaviors. Each seminar in the series was presented by a preceptor. OUTCOMES: Students reported gains in their perceived readiness to practice. The casual format and preceptor presenters were highly valued by students. CONCLUSIONS: NP educators should consider leveraging academic-practice partnerships to standardize students' acquisition of administrative, operational, and systems-focused NP competencies.

Transition of Nurse Practitioner Faculty Practice and Student Clinicals to Telehealth: Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced the US health care system to evaluate alternative care delivery strategies to reduce the risk of coronavirus transmission to patients and health care providers. Telehealth modalities are a safe and effective alternative to face-to-face visits for primary and psychiatric care. Federal policy makers approved changes to telehealth reimbursement coverage and allowed flexibility of location for patients and providers. This article describes the transition of patient visits to telehealth by nurse practitioner faculty at an academic medical center to maintain continuity of care of underserved patient populations. This pivot facilitated resumption of clinical learning experiences for nurse practitioner students.