Connecting Academia and Technology to Build Clinical Placement Capacity

In the United States, there are current and impending shortages of Registered Nurses (RNs) at both the bedside and within academia. This problem is compounded by an aging RN workforce, as fifty-five percent of RNs are over age 50 and plan to retire within the next five to ten years. To complicate matters even further, the turnover rate among newly licensed RNs averages 17.1% in the first year of practice and 33.5 % within the first two years of practice (Ackerson & Stiles 2018).

This presentation will both describe and demonstrate how SUNY Empire State College’s School of Nursing and Allied Health (the “College”) used innovative cloud-based technology created by DAVIN Workforce Solutions, Inc. (“DAVIN”) to more effectively track clinical placements and manage the credentialing process for the College’s nursing students. Prior to establishing this connection, all student information needed to secure clinical placements for undergraduate and graduate nursing students was managed using labor-intensive manual processes and spreadsheets.

According to AACN’s report on 2016-2017 Enrollment and Graduations in Baccalaureate and Graduate Programs in Nursing, U.S. nursing schools turned away 64,067 qualified applicants from baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs in 2016 due to insufficient number of faculty, clinical sites, classroom space and clinical preceptors, as well as budget constraints. Almost two-thirds of the nursing schools responding to the survey pointed to a shortage of faculty and/or clinical preceptors as a reason for not accepting all qualified applicants into their programs.

Following a business process mapping that was conducted at the College, it became evident that automated processes for collecting and verifying the needed documentation was a critical next step to build additional capacity for the academic program. The college is also taking an approach that responds to lack of clinical sites with the use of technology to streamline and make more efficient the process of meeting clinical placement requirements.

Collaboration between the College and DAVIN (a nurse-owned and nurse-operated company) was facilitated by the President of DAVIN, a two-time alumnus of the nursing program, and the faculty and staff of the College.

There is an increased demand for RN-BSN and master’s degree in nursing programs in New York State, especially in light of recent legislation enacting the “BSN in 10” and the current and anticipated shortage of nursing faculty. Reflecting this demand, the College’s once-small online nursing program has grown to approximately 1200 students. DAVIN and its systems have made it possible for the College to increase clinical placement capacity (currently about 600 placements per year) without the added expense of human resources. Tasks that previously required manual entry of data and a significant amount to people time are now automated and managed using cloud-based technology. This technology not only improves efficiency but also enhances data security by providing a mechanism for the secure storage and transmittal of student credentials using industry standard encryption and a secure authentication protocol.

Lastly, participants will follow our work of solving these complex problems by ways of connecting, collaborating, and catalyzing. We are equally inspired by a professional practice framework marked by caring economics, transformational leadership, Watson's Caring Science and Benner's Novice to Expert Paradigm.

We believe this is an excellent example of the conference theme of “connect, collaborate, catalyze”.