Telehealth improves access to health care and has seen rapid expansion in recent years. Nurse practitioner (NP) students are expected to be able to use telehealth to provide health care on graduation; however, many programs of study do not include telehealth in the academic preparation of students. As a result, students feel unprepared to use telehealth to provide care to patients. To meet this need, a land-grant institution developed evidence-based competencies and curriculum to educate NP students in the area of telehealth. Curriculum included presentations, assignments, and simulation in the area of telehealth. Participants included 156 female and 15 male family nurse practitioner (FNP) students. Using a Likert scale from 1 (very unprepared) to 4 (very prepared), students indicated their knowledge and skill level for each telehealth competency area before and after the content delivery. Each competency demonstrated a significant increase in FNP student confidence and ability when comparing the pretest and posttest mean (p = .000). Outcomes of the project demonstrated the importance of including telehealth concepts into the curriculum for NP students to meet the needs and expectations of health care systems.

Background: Telehealth is becoming increasingly integral in providing improved access to care, especially for patients who reside in frontier and rural areas. Nurse practitioner (NP) faculty are charged with preparing NP students through curriculum and clinical experiences that align with the health care environment and the health care access needs of the populations they serve. Method: To meet this need, NP faculty at a land-grant university located in a frontier and rural midwestern state reinforced NP student telehealth curriculum and competency through application in a clinical environment. Results: Participants included 22 family NP (FNP) students and 19 clinical preceptors. According to the evaluations, the FNP students met seven of the eight competency criteria, and the preceptors met eight of the 13 evaluation criteria. Conclusion: Outcomes indicate telehealth curriculum competency can be reinforced through application in a clinical setting to prepare NP students to meet the needs of patients and changing health care environments. [ J Nurs Educ . 2020;59(7):413–417.]

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South Dakota is one of the nation’s most rural and frontier states and has the highest proportion of rural dwellers in the Midwest.  Many of the state’s counties suffer from provider shortages, with nurse practitioners increasingly being called upon to fill the role of the primary care provider in clinics and critical access hospitals. However, family nurse practitioner (FNP) education programs are not required to provide the training and skills necessary to meet the unique challenges of rural practice. An Upper Midwest land grant university prepares both masters and doctoral FNP students to fill primary care provider needs in South Dakota and the surrounding region. The purpose and scope of this two-year Advanced Nursing Education Workforce (ANEW) project was to enhance an existing academic/practice partnership to prepare primary care advanced practice registered nursing (APRN) students for practice in rural and/or underserved settings in the state and region. The ANEW project provided FNP students with a longitudinal primary care clinical traineeship experience in rural clinical settings. Trainees benefited from traineeship funds, learning advanced procedures and skill concepts through attendance at a series of educational workshops, and job placement efforts postgraduation. The ANEW project also provided for a comprehensive preceptor development collaborative designed to enhance competence and confidence for independent rural practice and facilitate job placement in rural communities after graduation. This project strengthened the quality of FNP education through an academic/practice partnership which resulted in a symbiotic, synergistic relationship to address rural work force supply and the identification of the knowledge and skills needed for current and future rural healthcare providers. Keywords: family nurse practitioner, education, preceptor, academic, practice partnership, rural primary healthcare, healthcare provider shortage DOI:  https://doi.org/10.14574/ojrnhc.v21i1.649