Meritorious Academic Partnership (MAP) Designation Program

A common concern of leaders of nursing professional development (NPD) or education departments in practice settings is hiring nurses with a master's degree in nursing education who lack the requisite knowledge and skills to adequately fulfill the position. As we speak with NPD practitioners around the country, we typically find less than one third who report NPD content in their master's in nursing education curriculum. Like NPD department leaders, these nurses recognize that they were prepared to work in academia but not in the practice setting. The irony of this gap in graduate nursing education content is that in many cases, opportunities for master's-prepared nurses to teach in an academic setting are limited. Furthermore, many master's-prepared nurses prefer an NPD role in the practice setting. [J Contin Educ Nurs. 2019;50(7):293-296].