An Academic-Health Service Partnership in Nursing: Lessons From the Field

AbstractPurpose: To describe the development of an academic-health services partnership undertaken to improve use of evidence in clinical practice.Approach: Academic health science schools and health service settings share common elements of their missions: to educate, participate in research, and excel in healthcare delivery, but differences in the business models, incentives, and approaches to problem solving can lead to differences in priorities. Thus, academic and health service settings do not naturally align their leadership structures or work processes. We established a common commitment to accelerate the appropriate use of evidence in clinical practice and created an organizational structure to optimize opportunities for partnering that would leverage shared resources to achieve our goal.Findings: A jointly governed and funded institute integrated existing activities from the academic and service sectors. Additional resources included clinical staff and student training and mentoring, a pilot research grant-funding program, and support to access existing data. Emergent developments include an appreciation for a wider range of investigative methodologies and cross-disciplinary teams with skills to integrate research in daily practice and improve patient outcomes.Conclusions: By developing an integrated leadership structure and commitment to shared goals, we developed a framework for integrating academic and health service resources, leveraging additional resources, and forming a mutually beneficial partnership to improve clinical outcomes for patients.Clinical Relevance: Structurally integrated academic-health service partnerships result in improved evidence-based patient care delivery and in a stronger foundation for generating new clinical knowledge, thus improving patient outcomes.Key wordsAcademic-service partnership, academic medical center, evidence-based practice (EBP), nursing research, healthcare delivery.Partnerships between academic and health service centers are increasingly valuable. Healthcare needs of the global population are changing, focusing more on quality and safety of care, the aging population, a limited health economy, and health policies that demand resizing the workforce. Academic service partnerships can contribute significantly to an effective response, as highlighted in recent reports on the future of nursing (Front Line Care, 2010; Institute of Medicine [IOM], 2010). The responsiveness of nurses to current changes in care delivery and health reforms demands science-based, validated innovations. Partnerships provide opportunities to leverage clinical, intellectual, and financial resources to generate new knowledge and translate that knowledge into innovative, real-world patient care practices. A defining characteristic of a learning healthcare system is the nimble use and creation of new knowledge such that existing population data inform real-time, indi vi dual -level patient care in an ongoing, reiterative manner (Olsen, Aisner, & McGinnis, 2007). As learning healthcare systems develop internationally, partnerships provide opportunities to link patient and population data with care delivery to build innovative systems that contribute to improved patient safety, quality of care, and quality of life across age groups.Within nursing, research has long been used to drive clinical decision making (Granger, 2001; Granger & Chulay, 1999; Titler & Everett, 2001) and improve patient outcomes. Repons by the IOM and others emphasize the expanding role of the nurse in bringing new knowledge to patients in a more timely manner (Brown, Donaldson, Burnes Bolton, & Aydin, 2010; Committee on Quality of Health Care in America, 2001; Granger, 2008; Patrician, Loan, McCarthy, Brosch, & Davey, 2010; Reis et ai., 2010). Nurses exert a positive influence on timeliness by increasing the use of evidence at the point of care; integrating qualitative and quantitative analytic methods to evaluate care delivery and patient outcomes; and developing multi disciplinary teams of clinical staff and university -based faculty and students (Slutsky, 2007). …