Via Linda Behavioral Hospital Receives Grant to Launch Nurse Preceptor Training Program

Working with Arizona State’s Board of Nursing to Continue to Create a Trained and Engaged Workforce

By Jaclyn Hull, CEO

 

Via Linda Behavioral Hospital is proud to announce its second-year participation in its nursing preceptor training program for nurses and a first-year participation in upskilling nursing personnel and training of capstone(senior) nursing students. The programs are supported by grant funding through ARS 36-1803 and awarded and supported through the Arizona   Board of Nursing.

Through funding, in July 2024 Via Linda Behavioral Hospital launched a training academy with different tracks depending on new employee professional experience to acclimate new staff nurses to our specialty field, documentation and milieu management practices. Through this training program, Via Linda Behavioral Hospital is not only targeted to further improve already strong patient satisfaction but improving workforce engagement and impact turnover rates.

With additional funding, in August 2025, Via Linda Behavioral Hospital will be launching its first capstone academic training course with the collaboration of academic clinical faculty and utilizing the Married State preceptor model to educate new student nurses as they transition into the behavioral health nursing profession.

This program will allow Via Linda Behavioral Hospital to assist in preparing our community’s future nursing professionals with the tools to perform quality, evidence-based, structured nursing patient care with the collaboration of student faculty.

The funding has provided avenues in which Via Linda Behavioral Hospital can upskill the nursing profession for mental health patient care awareness both within the mental health realm and the community. Through funding Via Linda Behavioral Hospital will provide innovative upskilling education to the community during a symposium scheduled for quarter one of 2026.

As a secondary benefit, Via Linda Behavioral Hospital was able to internally promote 49 preceptors allowing for further career growth and development within the organization. Taylor Dawson, one of Via Linda Behavioral Hospital’s preceptors, notes,” I’ve seen tremendous growth in our nursing staff thanks to the preceptorship program. New nurses come in with more confidence and skill, and they integrate into the team much more smoothly. It’s been rewarding to watch them develop not just clinically, but also in their communication and critical thinking. The program has really strengthened our team as a whole.”

Since the program’s inception in the Summer of 2024, the preceptor team trained just shy of 2,400 precepted hours and a total of 43 new RN hires. “Since the launch of the preceptor program in 2024, we have seen retention increase by 57.56% from June 2024 to June 2025”, stated Claire Romero, Chief Nursing Officer.

Via Linda Behavioral Hospital is honored to contribute to the delivery of quality behavioral health care and to support ongoing workforce recruitment and retention efforts in Arizona through its participation with the Board of Nursing under HB 2691/ARS 36-1803.

For more information about Via Linda Behavioral Hospital and its participation in HB 2691/ARS 36-1803, visit https://vialindabehavioral.com

 

About Via Linda Behavioral Hospital

Via Linda Behavioral Hospital has 120 beds and provides specialized mental health treatment for patients who need acute inpatient psychiatric hospitalization or intensive outpatient programming in Scottsdale and the greater Phoenix region.

 

Research reported in this publication/press release was supported by the Arizona Board of Nursing under HB 2691/ARS 36-1803: Student Nurse Clinical Rotation and Licensed or Certified Nurse Training Pilot Program. The content of this publication is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the Arizona Board of Nursing.