Cost-effective virtual clinical site visits for nurse practitioner students

Background: Clinical site visits (CSVs) are critical to assess the progress of nurse practitioner (NP) students. To overcome the challenges of effectively assessing long-distance students while maintaining a reasonable faculty workload, faculty implemented a project using FaceTime® to conduct online CSVs to assess NP student progress. FaceTime is a videoconferencing program available on Apple® devices. Method: Site visits were conducted by school of nursing faculty with real-time observation of the NP student–patient encounter. Afterward, faculty then completed the student, site, and preceptor evaluations. Faculty, preceptors, and students were surveyed regarding ease of use and acceptability of the iPad® visits. Results: FaceTime CSVs provided faculty with the information needed to fill out the required evaluation forms of the student, preceptor, and site, and the iPad visits were easy to use and acceptable to all stakeholders. Conclusion: Using FaceTime for CSVs saved faculty travel time and used fewer program resources.