Center to Champion Nursing in America

National Summit addressing Faculty Capacity Issues in the U.S.

June, 2008

As the nationwide nursing shortage continues to increase, nursing schools are turning away unprecedented numbers of qualified applicants. The ability to address nursing education capacity is critical to successfully meeting the healthcare needs of an aging and expanding U.S. population.

"Blowing Open the Bottle Neck" was the title of a lead paper presented to attendees of a national nursing education capacity summit hosted by the Center to Champion Nursing in America. This entity is funded by a collaborative partnership between HRSA, AARP, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the U. S. Department of Labor. Eighteen state teams were invited to participate in the Summit in June, 2008.

The keynote address was given by Ed O'Neil, director of the Center for the Health Professions at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. O'Neil addressed past, current and shifting paradigms that impact nursing education in the nation, suggesting that new paradigms need to generate disruptive ideas and rearrange the current system of nursing education for a new future.

Suggested strategies for change included:

• Aligning resources among regional collaborations and partnerships to align resources around a shared vision.
• Sharing of faculty among education and healthcare organizations and consolidation of resources such as clinical simulation centers.
• Merging of teaching and learning across education and health care with a focus on patient care outcomes and evidence-based research.
• Collaboration "until it hurts," especially those between nursing education and healthcare organizations.

Colorado was one of 18 states selected to send a team to the national conference. These teams were provided access to national leaders and experts in four key areas and were encouraged to share strategies to increase nursing education capacity across the nation in the following categories. Dr. Debra Leners was selected as a Colorado state team member. Dr. Leners represented the new UNC, NINES: National Institute for Nursing Education and Scholarship established in August, 2008.

Sessions provided information and discussion in the following arenas:

• Increasing faculty capacity and diversity
• Discussion focused on recruitment, preparation and retention of nursing faculty
• Professional development of existing faculty
• Institutionalization of innovative pedagogy for clinical faculty.
• Education Redesign : Discussions allowed teams to focus on best practices and innovations in using technology in education. State teams focused redesign of nursing education curricula on the five core competencies for health professions education defined by the Institute of Medicine's report, "Health Professions Education: A Bridge to Quality."
• Strategic Partnerships and Resource Alignment : Discussions focused on partnership development, asset mapping, resource alignment, communications and regional collaboratives. Teams had the opportunity to examine establishing effective public-private partnerships and collaborations between universities, community colleges, associations and the work force system.
• Policy and Regulation ; Sessions focused on working within their state and national legislatures. Teams discussed policies, regulations and accreditation requirements that both facilitate and create barriers to expanding nursing education capacity; strategies to overcome barriers in policy, regulation and accreditation to expand capacity; and options for innovation consistent with policy and regulation.

The Colorado state team, led by the Colorado Center of Nursing Excellence, is committed to working with the NINES and other state entities to Champion Nursing in America and assure sufficient capacity in schools of nursing throughout the state to meet the work force needs for Colorado.