Outstanding Nurse Preceptors Honored at UVA Health Ceremony
At a packed events room at the Doubletree Hilton Hotel in Charlottesville, Marianne Baernholdt, UVA School of Nursing dean and professor, honored three UVA Health preceptors for excellence in teaching and mentoring, part of the School and UVA Health's celebration of National Nurses Week 2025.
Preceptors—who offer instruction to both pre-licensure nursing students as well as RNs enrolled in the School's graduate programs who seek to become advanced practice providers—devote incredible time, energy, and instruction to nursing students across the School's BSN, CNL, and APRN programs. Across the last academic year, 335 preceptors across 75 sites around Virginia, including 35 at UVA Health, worked closely with the School's pre- and post-licensure nursing students dedicating nearly 140,000 hours of mentoring in the 2024-25 school year alone.
"In a nurse’s journey, there are many individuals who have an impact on them: patients, including peers, family members, faculty members, but preceptors occupy a very special, sizable place."
Dean Marianne Baernholdt
They are incredible difference-makers, Baernholdt said, and often mean the difference between a nursing student's future plans and choice of specialty practice area.
"In a nurse’s journey, there are many individuals who have an impact on them: patients, peers, family members, faculty members," said Baernholdt, the Pew Charitable Trusts Dean and Professor, and dean of professional nursing at UVA Health, "but preceptors occupy a very special, sizable place."
Earlier in 2025, nursing students nominated their preceptors for awards, and the School's faculty and administrators chose winners from among the nominations. Honored with 2025 School of Nursing Preceptor Awards were UVA Health pediatric ICU nurse Erin Fenerty, pediatric nurse Aradhana Khubani, and ED Clinical Nurse Specialist Dina Hood.
Erin Fenerty
2025 Outstanding BSN Student Preceptor Award
"Erin's students describe her as both caring and determined to help them get the most out of their clinical experiences," Baernholdt said in her remarks. "If Erin saw students struggling, she’d take time to explain a process again and send them resources to boost their learning. She really got her students directly involved in care and helped them understand the “whys” of particular practices or processes."
Aradhana Khubani
2025 Outstanding CNL Student Preceptor Award
"Like Erin, Aradhana is also a pediatric nurse whose CNLs students call out her ability to make everyone feel 'seen, heard, and loved,' and 'encouraged to try new things,'" Baernholdt said in her remarks. "Students tells us she goes out of her way to find more complex skills and experiences provide constructive feedback, and, when offering constructive criticism, Aradhana always reminded her students of their accomplishments and of how much they’d grown.
Added Baernholdt, "Aradhana also likes to feed students’ bodies—bringing them coffee and muffins many days—and made it a habit to thank them—gestures that 'made [students] feel like colleagues and fellow team member, versus just being seen as a student.'"
Dina Hood
2025 Outstanding APRN Student Preceptor Award
Clinical Nurse Specialist Dina works in the emergency department where she mentors advanced practice nursing students enrolled in the School's graduate programs. "Her advanced practice nursing student call her mentoring 'transformational' to their learning," Baernholdt explained, noting that "Dina regularly adjusted her schedule to ensure students’ experiences were high-impact, hands-on, and tailored to their professional goals."
Described by her students as "always available," Dina provided students with feedback, and "consistently modeled how to lead with clarity, conviction, and empathy." Said one student of Dina, "Dina showed me what I want to be when I ‘grow up!'”
Baernholdt closed her remarks with praise and thanks to all preceptors, who she called, "are such an important part of our School of Nursing family."
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