Partnership: Configurations for Today & Tomorrow
Partnerships exist in a variety of configurations depending on the nursing workforce issue. Across the nation, the diversity in partnership arrangements emerging and evolving are described in AACN Issue Bulletin October 2002 Using Strategic Partnerships to Expand Nursing Education Programs. Partnerships in nursing include:
• Partnerships to strengthen the educational capacity of clinical settings. Emory University, in partnership with healthcare facilities, conducts a ‘Gerontological Clinical Preceptor Program’, a Center for Caring Skills, and formalizes opportunities for hospital and education partners to network. Another example is the University of Washington's ‘Public Sector Nursing Project’ a collaboration between the Department of Psychosocial and Community Health, Eastern State Hospital and Western State Hospital. The purpose of the Project is to provide support and educational opportunities to the nursing staff in the state mental health hospital settings.
• Partnerships between and among educational departments and institutions. The ‘Escalating Engagement: State Policy to Protect Higher Education’, a project of the WICHE, will focus on how Hawaii’s colleges and universities can educate and train students in a way that promote the state’s workforce and economic development goals.
• Partnerships at the state and local levels to provide a powerful means of improving and expanding the nursing workforce. The 2005 final report on nursing workforce for long term care ‘Act Now for Your Tomorrow’ suggests that working collectively can help overcome a variety of challenges leaders face at the state and local levels. The U.S. Department of Labor (2005) provide insightful how-to-guidelines for ‘Developing State Partnerships and Initiatives to Address Long Term Care Nursing Workforce Challenges’.
• Partnerships with philanthropic foundations such as the John A. Hartford Foundation (JAHF), Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation are helping to establish new integrated models of nursing that create interface opportunities for education and practice. The Nurses Improving Care to Health System Elders (NICHE) is an innovative approach whereby acute care hospitals undertake system changes to systematically benefit older patients as well as nursing staff and other hospital staff. Out of this approach three additional models have emerged including the Geriatric Resource Nurse Model, the Geriatric Syndrome Management Model, and the Acute Care for the Elderly Model. Each of these models aims to improve focused and specialized care to older people; in addition to providing educational support and role modeling for nursing staff.
Developing solutions to address different aspects of the nursing workforce shortage is going to require collaboration between Hawaii’s healthcare associations, the state and local governments, labor and economic development agencies, healthcare providers, community agencies, and nursing education. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation provides guidelines on what governments, schools and healthcare facilities can do to respond to the nursing shortage. In the January 2005 issue of "Charting Nursing's Future" the Foundation profiles 10 partnerships among these sectors that are getting positive results. |
