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Collaborative Partnership Models: Weekend Nursing Program for Second Degree Students

Saturday, 16 November 2013: 3:15 PM

Susan Chaney, EdD, RN, FNP-C, FAANP
Susan Sheriff, PhD, RN, CNE
College of Nursing, Texas Woman's University, Dallas, TX

Learning Objective 1: Describe a program to offer baccalaureate nursing education via a weekend program for second degree students.

Learning Objective 2: Examine the advantages of nursing education and nursing practice collaborative partnership models.

One of the most pressing problems facing health care today is the current and future nursing shortage. Texas Woman's University (TWU) developed an innovative way to create a new curriculum to meet changing needs of the second degree student. TWU reinvented nursing education through a collaborative academic-practice partnerships with three large health care systems to offer baccalaureate nursing education via a weekend/online program. The collaborative partnership between TWU and the practice partners offers a six semester (including summers) upper division nursing program to second degree students. All didactic courses are offered via distance education with 100% of course content online.  Clinical nursing courses are offered on weekends.  The clinical components are taught by masters-prepared nurses employed by the partnering hospitals who are mentored by the TWU nursing professors.

            The goals of this project were to demonstrate how a partnership between a nursing program and health care organizations (Baylor University Medical Center, Parkland Health and Hospital System and Methodist Healthcare System) can benefit all organizations through a sharing of resources and expertise, and accept the challenge of the Institute of Medicine and the need to increase the BSN prepared workforce to 80% by 2020. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board awarded TWU $330,000 to implement this new program.  Twenty students were admitted in May 2008 and completed the program May 2010. The program was further expanded when TWU received a $744,422 Health Resources and Service Administration (HRSA) grant to expand the program over three years from 7/1/2010 through 6/30/2012. Currently, 105 students are enrolled in the TWU weekend nursing program (WNP). Sixteen students graduated from the program in August 2012. The HRSA grant expanded the collaborative partnerships to provide nursing students opportunities to serve vulnerable populations in the clinical setting.

See more of: Global Partnership to Improve Nursing Education
See more of: Oral Paper & Poster: Clinical Sessions