When reach exceeds touch: Student experiences in a cross-sector community-based academic-practice partnership

Area of Science:

• Nursing Education
• Public Health
• Community Partnerships

Background:

• Children with asthma face significant health challenges, necessitating improved self-management strategies.
• Academic-practice partnerships can enhance capacity to address pediatric asthma outcomes.
• Cross-sector collaborations are vital for community health improvement initiatives.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore undergraduate nursing students' perceptions of their clinical experiences teaching asthma self-management.
• To understand how a community-based academic-practice partnership influences student learning and professional development.
• To evaluate the impact of interprofessional collaboration on asthma self-management education for children.

Main Methods:

• Qualitative focus group methodology employed by nursing faculty.
• Purposive sampling of 42 undergraduate nursing students.
• Collaborative content analysis, coding, and theme development of transcribed focus group data.

Main Results:

• One overarching theme and three sub-themes emerged: positioning, professional/personal identity, and social awareness.
• Student learning was linked to the partnership's goals, environment, and operations.
• Students gained insights into the values, ideas, and innovation within the partnership.

Conclusions:

• Community-based academic-practice partnerships provide unique clinical learning opportunities for nursing students.
• Exposure to partnership dynamics fosters student development in professional identity and social awareness.
• Such collaborations are effective in improving population health outcomes for children with asthma.