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

A partnership between three nursing programs, multiple high-needs public school districts and a local asthma coalition was developed as a way to build shared capacity aimed at improving health outcomes for children with asthma. This article explores student perceptions of their clinical experiences teaching asthma self-management within a regional cross-sector, community-based, multi-site academic-practice partnership.

Nursing faculty from three Long Island, New York-based nursing programs within the partnership jointly created a qualitative focus group methodology to more fully understand the phenomena of interest. A set of open-ended interview questions guided the sessions.

Through purposive sampling, 42 undergraduate nursing students participated in 60-min focus group sessions.

Focus group data were transcribed. Content analysis, coding, and theme development was carried out collaboratively. The unit of analysis was the individual participant responses informed by group interaction. A researcher diary was maintained.

One overarching theme and three sub-themes emerged from the data, reflecting student understandings in the areas of positioning, professional/personal identity, and social awareness. Ongoing analysis revealed patterns across the data sets linking student learning and the goals, milieu and workings of the partnership.

Findings suggest that the context of a thriving community-based academic-practice partnership, established to improve population health outcomes, offered unique clinical learning opportunities for students through exposure to the values, ideas, and innovation of the partnership itself.