Fall 2007

Message from the Dean | Nursing Briefs | College Partners with Presbyterian for Teacher-Clinician Initiative | 2007 Distinguished Alumni Awards | Endowing Your Values | Professors Legacy Lives on Through Endowed Scholarship

By Ian Van Deusen

Presbyterian Healthcare Services recently made an in-kind gift of nursing services that will provide nursing students with master clinicians to guide them through their clinical rotations.

The services, for which UNM’s College of Nursing (CON) would ordinarily pay $15,000 each semester, are part of the master teacher/master clinician model used at the CON. The master teachers are UNM faculty who direct the clinical rotations and guide the master clinicians in developing their courses. The master clinicians are Presbyterian employees donating their time to the program. “They’re at the bedside as their primary role, and they’ve volunteered to learn how to be instructors to the students,” says Johanna Stiesmeyer, Presbyterian nursing supervisor.

“We’re excited because it’s ultimately going to be an avenue to get more students into clinical rotations, into the nursing school, developing their skills in taking care of patients,” says Stiesmeyer. “I was rounding on the units a couple of weeks ago, and there was a group of UNM students there with one of our master clinicians. It was just a wonderful experience to talk with the students, who were extremely positive. They were very engaged and happy with the experience. It was fantastic.”

Each master clinician supervises seven or eight students in a typical course. Some 48 students did rotations at Presbyterian last semester. Hundreds of students come through Presbyterian each year from UNM, CNM, other academic institutions in the state, and even some from out of state.
Students working in the program may do rotations in several departments, such as critical care or a medical-surgical unit. “We’re looking to our emergency department, maybe our post-anesthesia unit, to support this,” says Stiesmeyer. “We really have a wide variety of units and patient care settings where we’re able to put the students.”

As the master clinicians learn more about coaching students, Presbyterian will be able to take additional students for clinical rotations. Stiesmeyer says, “There are three-year waiting lists to get into the nursing program, and that’s just of the qualified people. We’ve got to open up the doors and get these folks out there.”

UNM has used the master teacher/master clinician model with other institutions in the past. Stiesmeyer’s department formalized the program this year. Kathy Davis, senior vice president of nursing and patient care services, and Doyle Boykin, director of nursing practice development and informatics, both at Presbyterian, were instrumental in getting the funding for the program.

“The champions from UNM—the whole nursing administration, Deb Brady and Marie Lobo and all the faculty—have been absolutely stellar,” Stiesmeyer says. “They’re great people to work with. We’re excited to be able to contribute to that. We feel that this is a very worthwhile investment.”