Partnerships and new learning models to create the future perioperative nursing workforce

To create new and sustainable approaches for development of the perioperative nursing workforce, perioperative nursing leaders at a hospital collaborated with administrators and faculty at a school of nursing to create an innovative learning model that reintroduces perioperative experiences to students in a nursing baccalaureate program. Key components of the initial approaches included an externship for nursing students and a revised internship for experienced nurses who wished to work in perioperative nursing. Project leaders then expanded the nursing student learning opportunity by adding two additional elective perioperative courses to the curriculum. Formation of perioperative clinical placement sites within the senior-level adult acute care course was an additional positive outcome of these initial initiatives. These initiatives resulted in decreased use of agency nurses at the clinical site where the externships take place and increased numbers of younger nurses working in the perioperative areas where they externed, with high levels of satisfaction reported by nurses involved in the program. Through this innovative collaboration, the perioperative nurse shortage at the hospital has abated, and the opportunity to continually recruit new colleagues into the practice of perioperative nursing has been established.