Buckeye Inspiration: Preceptor Cherie Sexton
by Victoria Ellwood
For Cherie Sexton, CPNP, (’92) being a preceptor means even more than the clearly crucial role of mentoring and teaching clinical skills to advanced nursing students. It means building community.
“Do I precept? Yes, absolutely. Always,” emphasizes Sexton. “I feel really strongly that if we are going to have good providers come out of our programs, they need to have a good precepting experience. People learn best from someone they can feel comfortable with, in a place where they can get a good education and feel free to ask questions.”
Sexton is a pediatric nurse practitioner who runs a private practice out of a school-based health center and is district pediatric nurse practitioner for the Oregon (Ohio) public school system. Over the past decade, she has averaged precepting four students at any one time, mentoring 40 to 50 students – about half of them from Ohio State – over the years. And her commitment doesn’t stop there.
“I still have connections with almost every single one of my students. They all have my cell phone number. I tell them, ‘if you ever can’t remember something or want to bounce something off somebody else, just call me or text me.’ We stay in touch. We have our own networking group among us. And they connect with each other, too. That’s really nice.”
Sexton grew up in the small northwestern Ohio town of Oregon, and returned after earning her undergraduate degree at Ohio State and her master’s at the University of Toledo. Today, she oversees all six schools in the Oregon school system, with six school nurses reporting to her. Most of her time, though, is spent working in the unique public practice housed within the local high school.
“It’s nice for the students at the high school, because if parents sign consent, and most of them do, then the student can come down during the school day and be seen,” she explains. “Parents can always join them at any time, but most at this age choose not to. So if a kid gets sick in the middle of the day, they can be seen, or for immunizations, sports physicals or injuries, which sometimes happen because we have a vocational school that teaches machine trades. It’s nice to be here for them.”
The precepted students see patients right along with Sexton. “They start out following me until they feel comfortable. When they start seeing patients on their own, they come back and report to me, and I go back in with them to go over things, ultimately seeing the patient again.”
That process, she says, helps prepare students for their futures. “Definitely they are preparing for what they will be doing when they graduate,” she says. “That is the goal. I want them to feel comfortable, so when they are seeing patients in a medical office by themselves, they are ready to be independent.”
She adds, “I want their time here, with me, to be worth their while.”
Seems like it is. For her work, Sexton was named Pediatric Nurse Practitioner Preceptor of the Year at Ohio State last year.
