An innovative Center for Nursing Excellence model that supports structural empowerment and the achievement of exemplary nursing, patient, and organizational outcomes was implemented in 2 separate health systems in the western United States. Formal leadership roles for nursing practice, research, professional education, and Magnet® continual readiness are aligned to ensure that Magnet designation is attained and maintained in system hospitals.
This article discusses how aspects of a holistic comfort theory were adapted to create a taxonomic structure to apply its concepts to a fast-track nursing education program. The principles of learner-centered education were combined with comfort theory to develop strategies that appear to have produced positive influences on the attributes and contexts of comfort within the learning community. With emphasis on balanced academic exposure to the art of comfort as well as the rigorous science of nursing, students and teachers developed a mutually rewarding learning partnership. The resulting grid, adapted from Kolcaba's taxonomic structure, exposes educators and students to the application of holistic comfort theory. It is anticipated that this adaptation may assist students to transform into professional nurses who are comfortable and comforting in their roles and who are committed to the goal of lifelong learning.
Aims and objectives
To discuss the need for a formalised structure that bridges the clinical and academic realms with concrete recommendations for programme development.
Background
In the rapidly changing landscape of health care, nurses are challenged with the responsibility to engage in evidence‐based practice, quality improvement and research projects. Clinical and academic partnerships play a vital role in fostering collaboration, mentorship and resources.
Design
Discursive paper.
Method
Searching international literature published between 2010–2020 in PubMed, CINAHL and Google Scholar, we explored the benefits, barriers and facilitators of clinical academic partnerships from the available evidence and professional perspectives from both sides of a clinical/academic collaboration.
Discussion
Evidence‐based literature supports the establishment of partnerships schools of nursing and clinical institutions to improve patient outcomes and experiences and provide additional resources for improved research and practice capacity between both entities. Barriers to establishing clinical academic partnerships included lack of time, lack of formal collaborations and knowledge deficits. Facilitators included visible leadership endorsement, mentoring and modelling a culture of inquiry.
Conclusions
The establishment of formalised clinical academic partnerships can be used to develop continuing education programmes, promote engagement in nursing inquiry, fill in knowledge gaps in practice and improve available resources and patient outcomes. There is a great need for capacity building in hospitals, superficially, those with a mission to address the research‐practice gap, promote nursing excellence and improve patient outcomes.
Relevance to clinical practice
Nurse leaders play an instrumental role in establishing sustainable clinical academic partnerships that create shared resources, resulting in mutual benefit, and influences a much‐needed shift in organisational culture and infrastructure.
-Letters from Silas Burroughs to his junior partner Henry Wellcome and other business associates have recently come to light. Written during his travels (1880-1882) soon after the establishment of their pharmaceutical company, the letters show how this energetic, resourceful and imaginative salesman developed and expanded the business overseas and tackled the problems of preservation, packaging and marketing of medicines in tropical countries.
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