Leveraging a Successful Faculty Practice Model to Recruit and Retain Early-Career Nurse Faculty

The shortage of nursing faculty is well documented as are the challenges of attracting and retaining early-career faculty, in part, due to difficulties transitioning expert clinicians into faculty roles.

There is little guidance in the literature describing successful formal transition models.

An urban College of Nursing Faculty Practice (CON FP) underwent an operational redesign beginning in 2014, resulting in an intentional success: a pipeline for attracting and developing early-career faculty. This article describes how the CON FP leverages faculty practice to develop early-career faculty.

Across a 6-year time span, at least 20 early-career CON FP clinicians have transitioned to full-time faculty roles. In addition, CON FP clinicians provide more than 75 000 direct care nursing services and support more than 25 000 student clinical and project hours annually.

We offer this early-career faculty practice pipeline model as a solution for attracting and growing a contemporary nursing faculty workforce.