Developing a postgraduate professional education framework for emergency nursing: a co-design approach.

Area of Science:

• Health Professions Education
• Nursing Education
• Curriculum Development

Background:

• Hospitals and universities independently invest in emergency department registered nurse preparation.
• This leads to duplicated curricula and resource allocation in health and higher education.
• A co-designed study involving clinical and academic stakeholders was conducted.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe an evidence-based co-design study for postgraduate emergency nursing education.
• To address the duplication of resources and curricula between academic and clinical settings.
• To foster collaboration between university and industry partners.

Main Methods:

• The study utilized evidence-based co-design principles.
• Twenty-one clinical-academic stakeholders participated in 18 hours of co-design workshops.
• Emergency nursing served as the exemplar for the co-design process.

Main Results:

• Developed matrices aligning professional and regulatory requirements for nursing coursework.
• Created mutually shaped curriculum content, teaching methods, and assessments for postgraduate education.
• Established a University-Industry Academic Integration Framework and guiding principles for co-design.
• Produced a Graduate Certificate of Emergency Nursing curriculum exemplar.

Conclusions:

• Industry-academic co-design enhances the relevance of specialist postgraduate nursing courses.
• Strengthened collaboration advances learning and improves employability for nurses.
• The study provides strategies and exemplars for future academic-industry educational partnerships.