Purpose: This presentation describes the establishment and the planned evaluation of these partnerships.
Conceptual Framework: With the Logic Model as the organizing framework, to ensure that the SCAN Program and the community partners have congruent aims, the Reciprocal Empowerment Model will be used to guide the collaboration.
Research Questions: 1. How satisfied are the community partners with their investment in the students' education? 2. How satisfied are the SCAN students, faculty, and administrators with the partnerships? 3. What are the partnerships' positive (benefits and products) and negative aspects (problems and issues)? 4. To what extent are the SCAN project staff, faculty, students, and community partners empowered by these partnerships?
Methods: In addition to the required prelicensure clinical hours, the SCAN curriculum incorporates an intensive work-study clinical internship in the last semester of the prelicensure phase. Partners provide clinical preceptors and stipends for the students while faculty provides student experience coordination and guidance. Partners continue student fiscal support while they pursue their graduate degree.
To answer the first three research questions, separate focus groups of a purposeful sample of SCAN program faculty and students and community partners will be conducted. Interviews will be audio-taped, transcribed, and content analyzed. The Reciprocal Empowerment Scale will be administered to the same sample at the start and end of the clinical internship, and upon completion of the graduate program. Data will be analyzed using repeated measures analysis of variance.
Results and Implications: Results will guide future partnerships and provide information about the Reciprocal Empowerment Model's utility for developing “town and gown” partnerships.