Building Academic-Clinical Partnerships For Evidence Implementation

Many universities and clinical organizations have recognized that partnerships play an important role in bridging the evidence-practice gap. Three university-based evidence based practice centers have developed clinical fellowships founded on collaboration with clinical facilities. These partnerships evolved because of a realization that as partners, the universities and agencies could do more together than they could alone. Motivation grew from both the university and the clinical facilities. At TCU, a collaboration was developed to promote evidence based practice and clinical research. From this collaboration, a consortium of academic and clinical facilities was formed to develop and implement an evidence based practice fellowship. In New Jersey, chief nursing executives sought consultation with the school of nursing to build evidence based practice skills and capacity among their nursing staff. At the Indiana center, they capitalized on joint clinical appointments where faculty facilitated evidence implementation. In addition, the Purdue Calumet School of Nursing had developed unique partnerships to offer an online RN to BS program with several clinical facilities.

In addition to the academic-clinical partnerships, the Centers themselves have advanced their collaboration as they built their fellowships.  They are collaborating centers of the Joanna Briggs Institute and have missions to synthesize and translate evidence for utilization in practice. They capitalized on their network to help each other establish their fellowship programs, sharing curricular strategies and tools.  Based on the kindling work of their fellowships and other endeavors, they have created a multinational evidence synthesis and implementation network with the aim to generate further implementation and synthesis science among centers in the US, Canada and Brazil.

We will discuss the key elements of these successful academic-clinical partnerships in the context of evidence implementation fellowships, how they are sustained, and the value they add to both the academic and clinical partners.