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Tamara Clapper

Biography

Dr. Tamara Clapper's experience in the healthcare field started at a young age where she began her journey as a patient care technician. She excelled in the ability to perform her job and made her decision to move forward in Nursing. Dr. Clapper started her journey in a technical community college up north, and when she moved to Florida, she transferred to Pensacola Junior College, which was her first alumni.

After graduation, she started practicing as a Registered Nurse in a local Emergency room. She gained a plethora of skills and decided that she would love to work with critically ill patients. After caring for traumas, her heart was set to see the improvements of the patients and not just the emergent side of patient care. She spent many years performing various roles as a critical care RN. She traveled, did local relief contracts when hurricanes came through, and most passionate of all, she precepted students and trained new nurses. Her passion has always been to spread her knowledge to other health care professionals, as well as gain their knowledge that she was lacking in.

Through her preceptorship roles, she gained acquaintances with community instructors, which was all it took to move on with her education and start her own educational path of learning how to pass on all she had learned in her years of nursing. She completed her BSN online and jumped right into her MSN in nursing education.

She started to adjunct teach in the community while in school obtaining her degrees. After completion of her MSN, she was employed fulltime to teach associate level students at a local Pensacola college. She jumped right back in to complete her Doctorate's, and in her last term, was blessed to be offered an adjunct position at the University of West Florida. While in her adjunct position, she graduated from Capella University in June of 2023 with her Doctorate of Nursing degree in leadership. She was directly offered a full-time position at UWF's School of Nursing, which she accepted with honor. She has been teaching full-time at the School of Nursing since October 2023, and claims this is the best nursing career experience thus far.