Desperate Nursing Students Turn to Fixers for Clinical Training

This is the fourth installment of The Nurse Will See You Now, a series documenting how the increasing reliance on nurse practitioners is imperiling US patients. Read part one here, two here and three here.

Across the US, nurse practitioner students face the same problem. Like medical doctors, they need to complete clinical rotations to graduate. Unlike doctors, they don’t have access to federal funding to support that training, and their schools often leave them to find their own clinical instructors, known in the industry as preceptors.

The stakes are high. For many students, it’s the only time they’ll ...