Background: University-community partnerships are receiving increasing attention as a means of preparing nursing students for practice in the 21st century. An externship program represents a unique opportunity for practice and educational partners to bring together resources in a way that can be mutually beneficial for both. This poster presentation will describe a partnership between a regional hospital and a school of nursing in the southeastern United States in the development and planning of a 6-week summer externship experience. The externship described here is unusual in being offered prior to the graduating semester. Little is known about such non-terminal experiences, especially the reintegration of students into traditional instructor led practicums.
Design/Method: Therefore a multi-phasic qualitative research study was conducted in conjunction with the externship. Data were collected before, during and immediately following the externship experience using a combination of focus groups and interviews with student-preceptor dyads (weeks 4 and 6). A pre-graduation student focus group and individual post 6 months post graduation interviews were conducted. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using constant comparative methodology.
Findings: Findings from the first three phases of the study revealed the major theme characterizing the externship experience to be “empowered learning on the inside.” As insiders nursing students were acculturated to the world of nursing changing both the way they experienced nursing and related to others. Empowered quantum leap learning in several domains was a powerful outcome of this non-terminal experience. Not wanting the externship to end and mourning its loss described termination of this experience. These findings will be compared with phase four pre-graduation findings and phase five post graduation once these phases of data collection have been completed.
Implication: The impact of these findings for both partners will be detailed, together with recommendations for future community-education partnerships involving externship experiences.
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