Biography

Dr. Tanner joined Frontier Nursing University in 2011 after teaching for many years as adjunct clinical and didactic faculty in undergraduate and graduate nursing programs. She is an assistant professor at FNU teaching in the CNEP program and specializes in antepartum care. She is involved on many FNU committees including the curriculum committee, admissions committee, culture of caring committee, and currently chairs the research committee. Dr. Tanner enjoys teaching aspiring nurse-midwives and believes that we should “midwife” our students into kind, competent, caring practitioners through our example as professors. Dr. Tanner is an active participant in several national midwifery organizations. She is a past two-term national treasurer of the American College of Nurse-Midwives and currently chairs ACNM’s Healthy Birth Initiative. She has been a CNM representative to US-MERA (US Midwifery Education, Regulation, and Association), a group of diverse midwives from professional organizations across the United States. Dr. Tanner’s passion is promoting physiologic birth as the optimal birth experience for women, and she has presented about promoting physiologic birth both nationally and internationally. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the A.C.N.M. Foundation, Inc., and is the past secretary and current chair of the research committee of the American Midwifery Certification Board. Dr. Tanner was awarded the prestigious Nightingale Award in the state of Colorado in 2011. Dr. Tanner has worked clinically as a nurse-midwife serving primarily under-served women for the past 21 years. She speaks Spanish and cares for many Spanish-speaking women as well as women of other ethnicities and cultural backgrounds. She currently practices clinically in a group midwifery practice in Aurora, Colorado. She has practiced in group and solo practices and in rural and urban environments during her nursing and midwifery career. She has also been active in local educational events to promote normal birth and quality care for women. She is active in her local community, is a member of the Relief Society of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and enjoys spending time with her friends and family. She is the mother of six children, and enjoys reading, traveling, and lifelong learning. Dr. Tanner earned her PhD in Nursing from the University of Colorado in 2012, her Masters in Business Administration from the University of Phoenix in 2000, her Masters in Nursing from the University of Utah in 1996, and her Bachelors in Nursing from Westminster College of Salt Lake City in 1994. Her research interests center around women’s beliefs and attitudes about birth and promoting physiologic birth in the hospital environment. She is a member of Phi Kappa Phi, Sigma Theta Tau, and Frontier Nursing University Honor Societies and has won research awards and scholarships from several national conferences and nursing and midwifery organizations.