Building bridges: an innovative academic-service partnership

Academic and service entities can create sustainable models of collaboration that realign relationships and resources to enhance the critical competencies essential for entry into practice. Our hospital and school collaborated to implement an innovative academic-service partnership model in which the academic and the care delivery enterprises intersected to accomplish goals of mutual interest and enhance and enrich the practice environment. Two existing resources-the staff nurse and faculty-were used to realign the educational process with the realities of nursing practice in an interpretive, contextual, live unfolding clinical environment that was relevant and memorable. The students were better integrated into the clinical operations and showed increased levels of critical thinking, clinical decision-making, and clinical inquiry skills. The model holds promise to improve transition to practice, make better use of existing resources, and foster collaborative relationships among the academic, practice, and regulatory enterprises.