The Tan Chingfen Graduate School of Nursing at UMass Chan Medical School in Worcester will lead the newly-created New England Nursing Clinical Faculty and Preceptor Academy in its mission to increase nursing educators and train more nurses for the region’s workforce.
The UMass Chan Clinical Faculty Development Center’s Teaching of Tomorrow program and the federally funded Area Health Education Centers, or AHEC, in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire, will form the academy with UMass Chan.
“There is a shortage of clinical sites for nurse learners since nurses are stretched providing care. How do you build in the time to teach when you are busy providing care?” said Linda Cragin, instructor in family medicine & community health and MassAHEC program director. She is serving as the academy’s practice partnership liaison.Â
The initiative is funded by a $4-million, four-year grant through the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration’s Nurse Education, Practice, Quality and Retention Clinical Faculty and Preceptor Academies.
Preceptors oversee and provide feedback on the work of nursing students and new nurses.
In the first year of the grant, MassAHEC will work with centers in the Berkshires and on Cape Cod.Â
