Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/534828
68 pride and a status symbol, and means by which they can attract nurses. We're always teaching graduates that they should look for Magnet status or for a hospital to be on the Magnet journey when they are looking for jobs. There's no better external valida- tion for nursing than Magnet. That's something I would always tell my students to look for and urge them to discuss during the in- terview process why a hospital may not be on that journey if they encounter one that's not. Q: What is an example of a great partnership between a school and a nurse employer? What made it successful? PR: If you think about it, there is an education/practice gap. And that should make sense — it's hard to teach students exactly ev- erything they need to be competent on their first day of work. One of the things I think is incredibly important to nursing in general is to create those robust academic-practice partnerships. A lead- ing initiative of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing and the American Organization of Nurse Executives is to promote those relationships. It is a symbiotic relationship. The hospital is continually helping the educational organization to define what competencies nurses need to demonstrate. Those change pretty rapidly, and certainly academic course materials can't keep up on that, so engagement of practice partners to continually define what we should be as- sessing in the students is important. Hopefully, what the educa- tional entity can give back to the hospital is assistance with such things as continuing education, research development, and as- sistance with evaluation of programs. Additionally, educational institutions need clinical training space for all levels of nursing education. There should be academic-practice partnerships; we're a prac- tice-based discipline. Without the connection of one to the other, it doesn't make sense — this is often the case but it doesn't make sense. Q: Why wouldn't a hospital want to have such a partnership? PR: There should be no reason they wouldn't want to, but there are a lot of choices out there. It's incumbent upon the educa- tional institution to make sure they're bringing real value to the hospital partner, and I guess vice versa. Hospital leaders have a vested interest in narrowing the education-practice gap and academic leaders want their graduates to be the employee of choice. From the hospital perspective, when the gap is wide it can be very expensive to develop nurses to the desired level of competency. Q: Is there anything you'd like to add about advancing the education of nurses? PR: We focus a lot on the BSN goal within the IOM's report, and they do call out that 80/20 percentage, but if you read the whole report, it's calling for a highly educated workforce. In ad- dition to needing the number of baccalaureate grads, we need nurses with graduate degrees as leaders and advanced practice nurses like nurse practitioners. That's going to be enormous as we move forward. The Affordable Care Act has ensured health insurance coverage for an additional 16 million people in the U.S. Optimally, all those people will access primary care ser- vices. Research has consistently demonstrated that most of that primary care can be delivered by nurse practitioners at a reduced cost at an equivalent or better level of quality. Plus, we desperately need nurses committed to educating our future nursing workforce through faculty roles. We need to be encouraging nurses to take the next step in their educational journey regardless of their current degree status. Fur- thermore, we need to make that educational mobility affordable, accessible and desirable. n Capella is an accredited online university dedicated to providing an exceptional, professionally-aligned education. Health care employ- ers, including hundreds of hospitals, clinics, care centers, and national nursing associations, partner with Capella to develop critical tal- ent. Nursing Track 80/20, a unique program created by Capella, can provide immediate applicability to your nurse development goals. "In 2010, the percentage of practicing nurses with a baccalaureate degree was 49 percent. Today that percentage is closer to 60." — Dr. F. Patrick Robinson, Dean of the School of Nursing and Health Sciences at Capella University