Advanced practice: a model for neonatal/perinatal and women/child nursing

Collaboration between service and academia has often been disparate. A new model of cooperation was designed in the Fall of 1992 by faculty at the University of Connecticut School of Nursing and nurse administrators at John Dempsey Hospital of the University of Connecticut Health Center. A combined effort was undertaken to expeditiously prepare, at the graduate level, acute care nurse practitioners in Critical Care and Neonatal/Perinatal Nursing. The impetus for the collaborative effort was due in part to: reduced medical residency hours for patient coverage; limited access by patients to care in teaching hospitals because of demands in practice and academic roles; the need to bridge the gap between nursing and medicine; and fragmentation of care. The premise underlying all teaching, learning, and evaluation in the program is androgogy, or the art and science of helping adults learn. The program meets the current National Certification Corporation requirements for certification eligibility. A new evaluation instrument, the Learning Assessment Resource Scale (LARS) was designed by operationalizing Benner's seven domains of nursing practice. The Learning Assessment Resource Scale is based on the premise that expert nursing care is holistic rather than procedural. As an outcome of the collaboration between service and academe, there is enhanced mutual respect, the care-cure dichotomy has been bridged, and advanced practice nurses are educationally prepared to give expert care.