WNMU School of Nursing Clinical Instructor Mary McBrayer, RN, BSN, MAIS, won the 2022 New Mexico Nursing Education Consortium (NMNEC) Nurse Educator Endowment Award to honor the late Nancy Morton.
Having worked as a nurse in acute care since 2011, she has experience as a bedside nurse, charge nurse, float nurse, clinic manager and clinical educator. McBrayer began teaching at WNMU in 2020 when she planned and implemented strategic approaches that kept students on campus for hands-on lab experiences.
This award recognizes McBrayer’s resourcefulness and ingenuity that ensured the continuation of clinical lab skills courses for nursing students throughout the pandemic to this point.
Dr. Kimberly Petrovic, who is Associate Dean for the WNMU School of Nursing, nominated McBrayer for the honor. “She created a blueprint of sorts in which students attended lab in groups of three to six, for instance, while remaining within taped-off areas of the lab,” she wrote. “As a result, students were provided with consistency in the teaching-learning strategies, which helped to decrease the potential and real anxiety experienced by students amidst significant amounts of uncertainty brought about by the pandemic.”
McBrayer’s approach enabled students to stay on track in their progress from one level to another, critical to increasing the number of bachelor’s prepared nurses in the workforce.
McBrayer was presented with the award at the New Mexico Nursing Education Consortium statewide meeting at the end of last month. This award will allow Mary to attend and submit research for consideration by a face-to-face nursing conference and have travel expenses covered.
“Mary devotes an extraordinary amount of time to her students and is fully dedicated to preparing competent, safe nurses,” Dr. Petrovic said.