Academic-service Partnership Research Articles

Academic Service Partnerships: A 21st Century Business Strategy to Integrate Physician Assistant Learners Into a Value-Based Health Care Delivery Model.

Although there has been a surge in physician assistant (PA) programs in the United States, PA programs have concurrently experienced challenges with partnering with a sufficient pool of clinical training sites. During the long-lived fee-for-service era, many programs have relied on transactional relationships with individual clinicians, hospitals, community health centers, private practices, and other entities to provide the required clinical experiences for PA learners. These arrangements often involved bargaining a supervised clinical experience in exchange for continuing medical education credit or other incentives included in a clinician's benefits package. However, with the recent transformation of the US health care delivery system into a value-based care model, academic service partnerships have emerged as valuable solutions. Academic service partnerships uniquely integrate health professions learners into health systems by providing more sustainable, results-driven clinical experiences that benefit the program, the clinical training site, and the patients.

International Experience of Implementing Cognitive Remediation for People With Psychotic Disorders.

Cognitive remediation (CR) is an effective therapy for the cognitive impact of mental illness, especially schizophrenia. Global efforts are being made to implement CR into routine mental health services with the aim of improving functional outcomes for the population of people recovering from mental illness. Implementation and dissemination of CR in heterogeneous settings require knowledge gleaned from formal implementation research and pragmatic experiential learning. This article describes cross-cultural approaches to CR implementation, focusing on initiatives in France, the United States, Australia, and Japan. Key leaders in the implementation of CR in France, the United States, Australia, and Japan were asked to describe the implementation and dissemination process in their settings with respect to the categories of context, implementation, outcomes, facilitators, and barriers. All 4 sites noted the role of collaboration to leverage the implementation of CR into mental health rehabilitation services. In France, high-level, government organizational backing enhanced the dissemination of CR. Academic and clinical service partnerships in the United States facilitated the dissemination of programs. The advocacy from service users, families, and carers can aid implementation. The support from international experts in the field can assist in initiating programs but maintenance and dissemination require ongoing training and supervision of staff. CR is an effective intervention for the cognitive impact of schizophrenia. Programs can be implemented in diverse settings globally. Adaptations of CR centering upon the core components of effective CR therapy enhance outcomes and enable programs to integrate into diverse settings.

International Atherosclerosis Society Roadmap for Familial Hypercholesterolaemia.

Familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH), a common monogenic disorder, is a preventable cause of premature coronary artery disease and death. Up to 35 million people worldwide have FH, but most remain undetected and undertreated. Several clinical guidelines have addressed the gaps in care of FH, but little focus has been given to implementation science and practice. The International Atherosclerosis Society (IAS) has developed an evidence-informed guidance for the detection and management of patients with FH, supplemented with implementation strategies to optimize contextual models of care. The guidance is partitioned into detection, management and implementation sections. Detection deals with screening, diagnosis, genetic testing and counselling. Management includes risk stratification, treatment of adults and children with heterozygous and homozygous FH, management of FH during pregnancy, and use of lipoprotein apheresis. Specific and general implementation strategies, guided by processes specified by the Expert Recommendations for Implementing Change taxonomy, are provided. Core generic implementation strategies are given for improving care. Nation-specific cholesterol awareness campaigns should be utilized to promote better detection of FH. Integrated models of care should be underpinned by health policy and adapted to meet local, regional and national needs. Clinical centres of excellence are important for taking referrals from the community. General practitioners should work seamlessly with multidisciplinary teams. All health-care providers must receive training in essential skills for caring for patients and families with FH. Management should be supported by shared decision-making and service improvement driven by patient-reported outcomes. Improvements in services require sharing of existing resources that can support care. Advocacy should be utilized to ensure sustainable funding. Digital health technologies and clinical quality registries have special value. Finally, academic-service partnerships need to be developed to identify gaps in care and set priorities for research. This new IAS guidance on FH complements the recent World Heart Federation Cholesterol Roadmap.

Better Together: Collaboration to Enhance the Nursing Workforce.

Nursing is a demanding profession that calls for nurses to devote time, energy, advocacy, and compassion to improving clients' lives while providing safe, efficient care. Nurses make personal sacrifices to meet their clients' needs, which do not come without costs to their well-being. An increased migration of novice nurses out of the profession and the need to increase the volume of the nursing workforce by an average of 8% annually to address the projected nursing shortage presents a compelling need for immediate action. Reimagining the concept of academic-service partnerships to provide exposure to opportunities that can equip and empower novice nurses as they emerge into professional practice cannot be underestimated. Implementing approaches to assess, support, and nurture the health and well-being of nurses and health care organizations is foundational to retention.

Storylines, metaphors, and solutions in the work-readiness literature: A frame analysis

AimTo investigate how the literature frames the reported poor work-readiness of new graduate nurses and the solutions it recommends. DesignCritical frame analysis of work-readiness literature storylines. MethodsDeductive and inductive analysis of work-readiness literature published 2016–2019. ResultsThe three systematic reviews, literature review, and analysis of transition guidelines reinforced the belief that nursing graduates should be work-ready. In addition, the articles summarized service and academic innovations intended to assist newly qualified nurses transition to practice. ConclusionThe literature attributes perceived graduates' poor work-readiness to divergent faculty and employer expectations, personal deficiencies, defective learning environments, and poor workplace support. Internships, mentorship, academic-service partnerships, and curricular and pedagogical innovation are the dominant recommendations for reform. Workplace clinical education and training are not mechanisms for correcting graduates' work performance but essential activities for sustaining the nursing workforce. ImpactThe study should encourage more use of frame analysis in nursing education research. Fact-checking storylines must be a priority for future studies. Research that clarifies the fault lines between advocates of work-readiness and dissident academic leaders has the potential to promote dialogue. Work-ready, theory-gap, and other deficit metaphors must be put aside for the debate because universities must not relinquish their responsibility for educating students for the 21st century.

Wastewater-Informed Public Health Intervention Playbook

As the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic quickly spread from country to country and continent to continent in 2020, governments and scientists needed a way to track COVID-19 through populations in order to position public health interventions in the most impactful locations. Having a decision-based risk framework may help to guide policy creation that could minimize or prevent possible outbreaks and surges of infection within communities. The University of Louisville in partnership with Louisville’s Department of Public Health and Wellness tested this strategy in 2021 and 2022. This Wastewater-Informed Public Health Intervention Playbook describes the decisions and actions of that academic and public service partnership to develop an epidemiological-based, public wastewater surveillance system to monitor community infection and spread. This playbook details the cooperative processes between academic, public, and governmental organizations in the creation of a decision-risk framework, informed by wastewater-based community surveillance, that guided decision-making about public health interventions.

Academic-Service Partnerships: Increasing the Advanced Nurse Workforce.

Clinical education placement for advanced practice registered nurse (APRN) students is challenging for most graduate schools of nursing. This study describes the experiences of hospitals that formed academic-service partnerships to facilitate clinical education placement for APRN students. Hospital staff, schools of nursing administration and clinical faculty staff, clinical preceptors, and APRN students participated in the focus group and interview sessions during the evaluation of the Graduate Nurse Education demonstration project. Content analysis resulted in seven themes: APRN Student Enrollment, Clinical Placements/Process, Clinical Education Sites, Clinical Preceptors, Communication and Collaboration, Sustainability, and Funding Process. Future partnerships between hospitals, schools of nursing, and clinical education sites should consider collaborating in multiple regions to increase enrollment and clinical education placement opportunities for APRN students. [J Nurs Educ. 2021;60(4):190-195.].

Utilizing Academic–Service Partnerships to Advance the Care of Veterans

Challenges encountered in both advanced practice registered nursing (APRN) education and veteran health care include an aging workforce, limited resources, and faculty/staff shortages, which ultimately affect patient outcomes. Academic–service partnerships (ASP) address these challenges by increasing workforce capacity and engagement, promoting interprofessional collaboration and evidence-based practice, creating educational opportunities for nursing students to work with underserved populations, and offering a mechanism for recruitment and retention. This article outlines the systematic approach a large doctor of nursing practice (DNP) program in the southwestern United States used to develop and deploy an ASP program with 2 sizeable veteran-serving community partners.

Process Evaluation and Experience Sharing on Utilizing Information Communication Technologies and Digital Games in a Large Community Family Health Event: Hong Kong Jockey Club SMART Family-Link Project.

Background: Information communication technologies (ICT) are increasingly used in health promotion, but integration is challenging and involves complex processes. Large community health promotion events are often held but the experiences and processes have rarely been evaluated and published. No reports have described and systematically evaluated an ICT-supported health promotion event using digital games.Objective: We evaluated the development and implementation of a large community family health promotion event with ICT integration to promote family happiness with collaboration between academia (The University of Hong Kong) and the social (family) service sector, and collected feedback from participants and social service workers.Methods: We (i) conducted a systematic process evaluation, (ii) administered an on-site questionnaire survey on participant satisfaction and feedback, and (iii) collected post-event qualitative feedback from social workers on using new technologies, digital game design and overall experiences.Results: Fourteen digital games were designed and run in booths at the event by 12 non-governmental social service organizations and academia. Four gaming technologies were utilized: chroma key (green screen), somatosensory (kinect and leap motion techniques), augmented reality and virtual reality. 1,365 participants joined the event, in which 1,257 from 454 families were recruited and pre-registered through 12 NGOs. About 39.3% were male and more than half (53.3%) were aged 18 years and above. About 3,487 game booth headcounts were recorded. Games using virtual reality, kinect motion and green screen technologies were most liked. The average game satisfaction score was high (4.5 out of 5). Social service workers reported positive experiences with using new technologies in health promotion, and interests in future collaborations involving more ICT.Conclusions: Our systematic evaluation showed successful integration of ICT components in the health promotion event. This event, most likely the first of its kind, served as a capacity building and knowledge transfer platform for interdisciplinary co-sharing and co-learning of new technologies. It provided a solid foundation for further academic and social service partnerships and should be a useful model for similar community events and their evaluation. Further development and integration of ICT for health promotion among social service organizations with comprehensive evaluation are warranted.

Expanding an Academic-Service Partnership to Develop a Summer Perioperative Nursing Practicum for Baccalaureate Students.

Addressing the increasing shortage of perioperative nurses requires innovative educational strategies. A private university and a teaching hospital with an academic-service partnership collaborated to offer an educational perioperative nursing experience to baccalaureate nursing students to increase student interest in the perioperative nursing specialty. The university offered an elective summer practicum to baccalaureate nursing students between their junior and senior years. After completing the practicum, students had the opportunity to complete their senior-year clinical rotations in the OR. Continuous evaluation contributed to refining the design and implementation of the perioperative nursing practicum. The challenges of the program included cost, demands on staff members' time, and timing of the practicum relative to student and hospital needs. The practicum has been offered for three summers, and a total of six students have enrolled and participated in this program.

Academic-clinical service partnerships are innovative strategies to advance patient safety competence and leadership in prelicensure nursing students

Nurse-graduates today must be prepared to practice in a complicated healthcare system with numerous safety challenges. Although patient safety and quality competencies are a priority in nursing education, effective strategies for applying this knowledge into practice are needed. To meet this challenge, the Helene Fuld Leadership Program for the Advancement of Patient Safety and Quality at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing has developed an academic-clinical service partnership. Students are assigned to mentored, quality improvement projects in which they complete 100 hours over 2 semesters. This partnership links the Fuld Fellows with an interprofessional network of Johns Hopkins Medical Entity clinical Quality Improvement leaders. The partnerships have lead to manuscripts, professional job opportunities, and quality networking for both our students and mentors. Our strategic, academic-service partnership has improved student knowledge of patient safety principles and promoted nursing competence in patient safety with the development of future patient safety and QI nurse leaders.

Transition to Critical Care Practice Within an Academic-Service Partnership: A Case Report of the First 3 Years of Clinical Immersion in Trauma-Burn and Neuroscience Critical Care.

In response to regulators of nursing education and the Institute of Medicine, an academic-service partnership was formed between a research-intensive school of nursing and a tertiary health care facility. In that partnership, clinical experiences occurred mostly within 1 organization. This case report showcases the development, implementation, and revisions within our capstone immersion course, designed to ease the new graduates' transition into practice, including transitions to critical care nursing. Herein, we highlight our successes and challenges of implementing the clinical component within 2 critical care units focused on trauma and neurosurgical care of complex patients. Its purpose is to describe the planning and orientation phase, illustrate the mentoring processes used to achieve the educational outcomes, and describe the benefits and challenges of such an immersion experience. Our redesigned clinical immersion course in high-acuity nursing is facilitated by our partnership and resulted in improved RN-NCLEX rates, facilitation of best practices, and ease of transition into novice graduate nurse roles.

Implementing a Perioperative Nursing Student Summer Internship.

Using qualitative research and a collaborative academic service partnership, we created an innovative 120-hour perioperative nursing summer internship for eight undergraduate nursing students in 2016. Recognizing that perioperative exposure is limited in the traditional baccalaureate program, this unpaid internship served to clarify student perceptions of perioperative nursing care and encourage graduates to meet perioperative workforce demands. We based the theoretical and practical student learning experiences on the AORN Periop 101 learning modules and included faculty-led discussions, student journaling, and onsite precepted clinical activities. Evaluation data revealed that students achieved an enhanced awareness of perioperative nursing, and a majority of the participants expressed a desire to enter the perioperative field after graduation. We suggest that stakeholders continue to strategize ways to maximize educational preparation to address the evolving health care market supply and demand.

The academic-practice gap: Strategies for an enduring problem

The academic-practice gap in nursing is well documented. Academe is criticized for producing nurses insufficiently prepared to fully participate in patient care. Practice settings are criticized for having unrealistic expectations of new graduates. This article is based on a review of the literature and an exploration of contemporary practices used to bridge academic and practice partnerships. Differences in outcome expectations for new graduates between academe and practice are outlined and consequences of the gap for new graduates, patients, and employers are discussed. Five specific strategies to address the gap are discussed, with the primary realm and responsibility for two falling to education, one to practice, and two to both. Strategies discussed include increased use of simulated learning in nursing education; disruptive innovations in education that promote learner-centered active learning; extended orientation/Transition to Practice Programs for new graduates; dedicated education units; and academic service partnerships. Current literature suggests the viewpoints of academic and practice leaders continue to appear divergent. Closing the gap will require a dedicated and coordinated response from both academe and clinical practice.

A professionalism and safety code of conduct designed for undergraduate nursing students

Nationally, professionalism and safety are key concepts in nursing practice. Although they are traditionally viewed as individual concepts, we believe they are closely linked to and depend on one another. Herein, professionalism and safety are developed as a paired concept with specific indicators. The purpose of this paper is to describe the process used to develop and implement a professionalism and safety Code of Conduct for undergraduate nursing students and to share the end product of this process. Based on input from students, faculty, and health system partners in our academic-service partnership, the current definition and Code include six student behavioral domains: communication, self-awareness, self-care, professional image, responsible learning, and personal accountability. Our Code of Conduct is now a program policy and published in both the Student Handbook and clinical syllabi. Compliance is expected. Still under development are progressive clinical grading rubrics for inclusion in every clinical course.

An Academic-Service Partnership: A System-Wide Approach and Case Report.

An academic-service partnership was formed to increase educational capacity, improve evidence-based nursing at the point of care, and engage staff nurses, clinical faculty, and students in patient and family care. This case report reflects an overview of the first year of full implementation, and survey results from nurse leaders and faculty at the 3-year time point. Following its third year of an academic-service partnership, the shared mission, vision, and values have resulted in stronger NCLEX-RN results, improved quality initiatives, and trends for improvements in patient outcomes. Alignment with faculty and mentors surrounding student expectations has improved, as well as shared evidence-based practices. Sustaining an academic-service partnership requires dedicated leaders, faculty, and mentors. This partnership continues to thrive and move toward excellence in patient- and family-centered outcomes and undergraduate clinical education. [J Nurs Educ. 2017;56(6):373-377.].

Development of evidence based practice in academic service partnerships: Experiences of working life representatives from social and health care sectors.

Learning about how to develop and lead the implementation of evidence based practice (EBP) in services is an important part of the education of developers and managers for the social and health care sectors. In order to develop this teaching and to support the development of EBP in services, a Teaching Development Effort (TDE) was conducted by establishing academic service partnerships (ASPs) and connecting Master's students' assignments with them. The TDE was conducted as a part of a larger project whose main aims were to strengthen, develop and renew transfers of knowledge and competence between higher education institutions and workplaces, and to strive for a more multidisciplinary quality in workplace innovations. The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe the experiences of working life representatives regarding the development of EBP in ASPs within the social and health care sectors. The data were collected by email interviews. Eight working life representatives' participated in the study. The informants were asked to describe the usefulness of the plan that had been prepared by the students regarding the implementation of EBP, and to describe the significance of this ASP for the development of working life. A qualitative content analysis method was used when analyzing the data. Virtually all the informants stated that the plan prepared by the students, for the implementation of EBP, was entirely ready to be taken into use in the form they had finished it. The significance of the ASP was described in terms of the ASP assisting in improving the quality of the service. Furthermore, the workplace-based student assignment topics, external views to support the development of EBP, and the theoretical approach used by the students were valuable. The ASP provided opportunities for the practitioners to learn new things, inspiration to look to the future, and assistance in the implementation of time management practices. ASPs have potential to support EBP in services and the use of them is recommended.

Nursing Academic–Practice Partnership: The Effectiveness of Implementing an Early Residency Program for Nursing Students

The purpose of this paper is to describe an innovative academic-service partnership aimed at offering appropriate support to new graduate registered nurses (RNs) to facilitate their transition into practice. The partnership is between an integrated health care system based in southwest Ohio (Premier Health [PH]), a university setting (College of Nursing and Health, Wright State University–Miami Valley), and a national provider of nursing residency for new graduate nurses (Versant Holdings, LLC). The partnership offers insights on how to align both academic and service expectations related to the clinical competencies of new graduate RNs. In addition to decreasing the gap between academia and service expectations, the residency program offered a 2% decrease in turnover of new graduate RNs within 1 year, resulting in an estimated $600,000 of annualized cost avoidance. The purpose of this paper is to describe an innovative academic-service partnership aimed at offering appropriate support to new graduate registered nurses (RNs) to facilitate their transition into practice. The partnership is between an integrated health care system based in southwest Ohio (Premier Health [PH]), a university setting (College of Nursing and Health, Wright State University–Miami Valley), and a national provider of nursing residency for new graduate nurses (Versant Holdings, LLC). The partnership offers insights on how to align both academic and service expectations related to the clinical competencies of new graduate RNs. In addition to decreasing the gap between academia and service expectations, the residency program offered a 2% decrease in turnover of new graduate RNs within 1 year, resulting in an estimated $600,000 of annualized cost avoidance.

Extent of Collaboration in Building Academic – Service Partnerships in Nursing

Background: There is a growing concern in the nursing service industries to expand the roles of nurses. A well-developed and planned collaboration between the academic and services in nursing is required. Purpose: This study investigated the extent of collaboration in building academic-service partnerships based on the perceptions of the students, faculty, staff nurses, and nursing administrators. Methods: This study employed a descriptive research design to obtain a thorough picture about the extent of collaboration in building academic and service partnerships. The majority of the participants (n=500) were staff nurses (n=232, 46.4%) from 5 hospitals, students (n=160, 32%) and faculty (n=62, 12.4%) from 7 schools who were informed, consented and selected using a purposive sampling. A questionnaire was used to describe the extent of collaboration. Descriptive statistics such as mean, standard deviation, frequency, and the percentage were used. Results: Students, faculty, nursing administrators and staff nurses assessed the overall extent of collaboration in building academic-service partnerships to a great extent in terms of nursing education redesign, research collaboration, faculty practice, academic and clinical progression, and workforce development. Conclusion: Despite the fact there was a great extent of collaboration in building academic-service partnerships in nursing, the proposed intervention or enhancement program can be an instrument to strengthen the current status of nursing amidst radical reforms in the healthcare delivery.

Partnering for Evidence-Based Practice.

This column describes an academic service partnership to promote evidence-based practice.