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.

Academic-Service Partnerships in Nursing: An Integrative Review

This integrative review summarizes currently available evidence on academic-service partnerships in the profession of nursing. More than 300 articles, published primarily in refereed journals, were accessed. Articles (110) were included in this review as they presented detailed and substantive information about any aspect of a nursing academic-service partnership. The majority were anecdotal in nature. Topics clustered around the following categories:pre-requisites for successful partnerships, benefits of partnerships, types of partnerships, andworkforce developmentwith its themes ofacademic-practice progressionandeducational re-design.Many examples of partnerships between academic and service settings were thoroughly described and best practices suggested, most often, however, without formal evaluation of outcomes. Nursing leaders in both settings have a long tradition of partnering with very little replicable evidence to support their efforts. It is critical that future initiatives evaluate the effectiveness of these partnerships, not only to ensure quality of patient outcomes but also to maximize efforts at building capacity for tomorrow's workforce.