Innovations in Academic/Clinical Partnerships During COVID-19 to Prepare a Ready Nursing Workforce.

Management of the COVID-19 pandemic required healthcare leaders and frontline workers to rapidly innovate and adjust to a new reality that has forever transformed nursing education and practice. Throughout the pandemic, key stakeholders in Alabama lobbied for transformations in clinical training practice that ultimately improved students' exposure to clinical environments and alleviated the pressure on practicing nurses and other healthcare workers during pandemic hospitalization surges. The present article highlights the key partners and regulatory innovations that led to these successes in Alabama.

Academic-Practice Partnership Pivot During COVID-19 Pandemic Surge.

Health care systems continue to experience the sequential aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, with major care access, quality, safety, financial sustainability, and workforce considerations. Yet, academic-clinical partnership opportunities exist for transformational change, even when efforts to respond to a pandemic seem insurmountable. A nursing partnership between an academic health center nursing school and university health system provided short- and long-term support for the nursing workforce shortage during a COVID-19 surge. An academic-clinical integration framework guided planning, clinical support activities, outcomes achieved, technology innovations, and shared lessons associated with these efforts. The COVID-19 surge response steps included a call to action, preparation for surge support by the academic and clinical partners, and a team approach for clinical service delivery by faculty, students, and staff. Through the 6-week COVID-19 surge response, more than 10 000 hours of hospital nurse staffing were provided by nursing school faculty and students; over 770 worked shifts that provided approximately 30% of the full surge hospital supplemental staffing and approximately 46 000 vaccine encounters. Well-established academic-clinical nursing partnerships allow for quick pivots in the rapidly changing COVID-19 environment that can enhance nursing clinical proficiency and competency, augment clinically immersive learning, and reinforce analytics to measure health outcomes, lower costs, improve access, quality, safety, and workforce conditions.

Evaluation of a Postdischarge Call System Using the Logic Model.

This mixed-method study was conducted to evaluate a postdischarge call program for congestive heart failure patients at a major teaching hospital in the southeastern United States. The program was implemented based on the premise that it would improve patient outcomes and overall quality of life, but it had never been evaluated for effectiveness. The Logic Model was used to evaluate the input of key staff members to determine whether the outputs and results of the program matched the expectations of the organization. Interviews, online surveys, reviews of existing patient outcome data, and reviews of publicly available program marketing materials were used to ascertain current program output. After analyzing both qualitative and quantitative data from the evaluation, recommendations were made to the organization to improve the effectiveness of the program.