A nurse in New Mexico must know how to treat a patient who has fallen off their horse and fractured their spine in Farmington, or a patient covered in burns from oil splattering their arms in their family’s food truck in Alamogordo and can also assess metropolitan car accident victims or city construction workers in Albuquerque and Las Cruces. New Mexico is a state of diverse health care needs-- a state checkerboarded with rural and metropolitan communities.
Van Roper, PhD, RN, FNP-BC, has recently been named assistant dean of Clinical Affairs for The University of New Mexico College of Nursing. He will oversee the operations of the College of Nursing Simulation - including its Skills Lab - and continue the cultivation of partnerships and clinical sites. However, preparing nurses to treat New Mexico’s diverse rural and metropolitan communities is one of his main objectives.
“This position has always had these three responsibilities: creating a legacy of instruction that lives on in your students, ensuring our college has operational technology for simulation, and building relationships with the health care facilities in the state where our students will get their real-world experience. Where it has evolved is how we adjust our curriculum and clinical environments to teach students how to nurse in a post-pandemic world,” Roper says.
To ensure students are learning the skills necessary to prepare them for an ever-evolving nursing workforce, Roper assures that continued and increased diligence in forging clinical partners is the way to go. He knows that these actions, combined with those from dedicated nursing faculty and preceptors from the College and New Mexico communities, will answer the call to deliver invigorated curriculum and experiences for students.
Roper says he will give all his efforts to ensure the College has the preceptors, unit-based educators and clinical sites necessary to match the growing student body. Roper’s career-long passion and ever-growing understanding of rural health care amongst diverse communities, like those of New Mexico, will play a large factor in accomplishing his objectives as the new assistant dean of Clinical Affairs.
Roper says, “We are not just the University of New Mexico, but the University for New Mexico, and it is the goal of both Clinical Affairs and myself to highlight that fact so everyone from nursing affiliates to patients can be confident that we are here to help the entire state.
This position has always had these three responsibilities: creating a legacy of instruction that lives on in your students, ensuring our college has operational technology for simulation and building relationships with the health care facilities in the state where our students will get their real-world experience. Where it has evolved is how we adjust our curriculum and clinical environments to teach students how to nurse in a post-pandemic world.