An ongoing initiative to reach rural family nurse practitioner students

The challenges we have encountered in educating rural nurses to become nurse practitioners are not unique to Penn State but rather are similar to those encountered by other programs with similar missions. As emphasized in these reports, providing distance education to distance nurse practitioner students requires patience and flexibility. Also emphasized is that, although the numbers of rural nurses educated to become practitioners may be few, their impact on the rural community is magnified many times over. For our program, the difficulties encountered putting this rural initiative in place have been more than compensated for by the enthusiasm of our students and faculty and the very positive support we have received from practitioners and clients in the rural community. As a result of the plan described, we now have the opportunity to reach into the rural community itself for local, qualified nurses committed to providing primary healthcare to their own neighbors. We encourage other programs to do the same.