The practice role in the academic nursing community.

The practice role of nurse educators has emerged as a mechanism to unite practice, research, and education. The long-term outcome of such a synthesis should be an improvement in the quality of nursing care delivered to clients. Clinically focused nursing research designed by nurse educators who maintain a practice role or nurse clinicians who maintain a teaching role has the potential to unify and thus advance the profession. The authors discuss the historical background from which the practice role evolved, and efforts of recent nursing leaders to facilitate the incorporation of the nursing practice role by educators. Models for faculty practice are identified, and advantages of faculty practice are reviewed. The authors also describe barriers to the establishment of faculty practice, contemporary developments impacting faculty practice, and research needed to advance faculty practice. Nurse educators in many academic communities in the 1990s are discovering that not only must they produce scholarly work in addition to their teaching and service to the university and community, but that they may also be under growing pressure to be engaged in clinical practice. This pressure may be self-imposed or may be an expectation of their colleagues in nursing education or the administrators of their nursing programs. The focus of this research brief will be to describe the historical background from which this "new" role evolved, to discuss strategies or models developed to facilitate the faculty practice role, and to identify faculty practice issues that have emerged with the adoption of this role in academia. An additional focus will be to critically review faculty practice-related research performed since Chicadonz' (1987) review.

Nursing information systems: applications in nursing curricula.

America's healthcare system is being transformed to meet a new set of priorities: cost-effectiveness, quality, and access. To meet these priorities, health practitioners of the 21st century will rely heavily on computer information systems to provide complete, easily accessed patient data. Incorporation of this technology in nursing programs will enhance the quality of the graduates who will then strengthen the availability of a qualified work force to employers.

A community-wide RN refresher course: a collaborative success.

By combining forces, nurse educators and practitioners developed a unique RN refresher course that provided a supportive environment for successful reentry into professional nursing practice. Nursing faculty and administrators from a baccalaureate nursing program collaborated with nursing clinicians from seven acute care hospitals to meet the assessed needs of community nurses for reentry programs. The collaborative effort provided accessible courses at lower costs with qualified faculty and a variety of clinical practice experiences for nurses areawide. This article describes the planning, development, implementation, and analysis of this successful areawide RN refresher course.

Interdisciplinary research: evaluating writing to learn in the nursing curriculum.

A 3-year collaborative study was conducted by the department head of baccalaureate nursing and the director of writing at a southern university in Louisiana. The research was designed to test the effectiveness of an intense writing-to-learn curriculum intervention incorporated into a required introductory nursing course. Writing-to-learn strategies used in this study were designed to foster personal involvement in the subject matter, improve data comprehension, and encourage critical thinking (Dobie & Poirrier, 1995). The findings reported in this study represent Part III of a 3-year investigation into the effectiveness of using writing-to-learn strategies in freshman nursing classes.

ACE--Alliance for Clinical Enhancement: a collaborative model.

This paper introduces an innovative collaborative model developed by nursing educators and practitioners, the Alliance for Clinical Enhancement Program (ACE), that combines components of traditional internship and extender programs. The goals of ACE are opportunities for role socialization, role transition, and role modeling for nursing students; enhancing clinical competence and provision of financial assistance to the students; increased recruitment of RN graduates by the involved hospital; and decreased RN time spent on non-nursing tasks by hospital RNs. The total development, implementation, and analysis of ACE Program is discussed.