Telementoring to Improve Rural Provider Competence and Knowledge in Managing Vascular Disease

Nurse practitioners in the community often use clinical practice guidelines to manage patients, sometimes without access to specialist collaboration. Telementoring has the potential to improve primary care provider capacity to treat chronic illness by connecting community providers with specialists through video teleconference. The purpose of this project was to evaluate telementoring using a quasi-experimental pre-test/post-test design using a convenience sample selected from rural and underserved clinical practice sites in Virginia, which assessed provider confidence and knowledge in managing patients with vascular disease before and after participating in a ten-week telementoring program. Nurse practitioners who participated in the telementoring sessions reported improved confidence and knowledge. Suggestions for future implementation are shared.