Sunday, November 2, 2003

This presentation is part of : Community and Academic Collaborative Partnerships

Community-Academic Partnerships in Graduate Nursing Education: Voices of the Community Partners

The rationale for partnerships between schools of health professions education and community health organizations has been described in the literature. Principles of community-academic partnerships (CAPs) include reciprocity, focus on community-identified needs, and mutual planning, implementation, and evaluation. CAPs are often framed within the educational methodology of service-learning. The growing body of research concerning service-learning and CAPs in higher education, health professions education in particular, reveals positive academic outcomes. However, there are few reports of research involving service-learning and CAPSs graduate nursing education and there is a dearth of research designed to examine the community partner’s perspective of CAPs in health professions education. Findings of a study designed to explore community health organizations’ (CHOs) perspectives of partnership with a graduate program of nursing will be reported. The study is framed in the principles of community-campus partnerships and uses the grounded theory approach to qualitative research. The sample will include CHOs who have partnered with the Community Engagement Through Service-Learning (CETSL) project of the MSN Program, Bolton School of Nursing Case Western Reserve University. This project, funded by the Helene Fuld Health Trust from 2000-2002 is on-going. It includes a multi-stakeholder advisory group and seeks to include each MSN student in at least one course with a CETSL component. At present, 15 partner CHOs have participated in the CETSL project.

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