​Spring is a time to clean, organize, and prepare for warmer days. Nursing homes can use this season of transition as an opportunity to refresh their partnerships, including those with schools of nursing. Whether a nursing home has an established partnership with a school of nursing or is looking for a new partner, nursing homes and schools of nursing can forge effective, stimulating partnerships with mutual benefits.

Schools of nursing can provide value to nursing homes that want to enhance the quality of care for residents and diversify their talent recruitment strategies. Positive, impactful clinical experiences for nursing students in nursing homes can expose a new generation of nurses to the benefits of working with older adults while also helping them strengthen their gerontological nursing skills. Nursing faculty can be an invaluable resource for nursing home leadership through the sharing of clinical processes, techniques, and evidence-based programs.

However, nursing homes have not always been satisfied with their school of nursing partners. Many nursing home leaders believe they don’t have the resources or time to invest in clinical education for nursing students, especially with ongoing staffing challenges. They may also find it stressful to work with clinical faculty who have no prior nursing home experience.

Effectively partnering with schools of nursing is an effort in creativity and requires work on both sides. But like all work that is worth doing—there are tremendous rewards for both partners.

Partnerships in Pennsylvania

Over the past four years, nursing homes from the Pennsylvania Teaching Nursing Home Collaborative have identified promising practices for how to reinvigorate academic-practice partnerships between nursing homes and schools of nursing. The Collaborative’s lead nursing home partners in Pennsylvania, including Presbyterian SeniorCare The Willows, UPMC Canterbury Place, Centre Care, and Wesley Enhanced Living Main Line, have worked closely with their partner schools of nursing to strengthen their working relationships and improve experiences for residents, nursing home staff, nursing students, and faculty.

“Showing nursing students this specialty of care allows them to see the autonomy and critical thinking skills that the long-term care nurse possesses,” said Taylor McMahon, RN, director of nursing at Presbyterian SeniorCare The Willows. “This will help long-term care recruit the future workforce by giving them the opportunity to pursue a career that makes a difference by serving older adults.”

Nursing homes can use the following strategies validated by the Collaborative’s partners to revitalize their partnerships with schools of nursing. 

Assess What Has and Hasn’t Worked In the Past 

• Take a step back. Reflect on what has and hasn’t worked well with current and/or previous partnerships. Be sure to involve direct caregivers and licensed nurses in this conversation. Determine if a previous partnership didn’t work because of the nursing home, the school of nursing, or both, and whether it can be salvaged.
• Establish goals. What would be most beneficial for the facility? Does the nursing home need to test a new way to engage local nursing students? How could nursing students most benefit the residents during their clinical time in the facility?

Update or Create New Partnership Structures 

• Find a new partner. Nursing home leaders can connect with local schools of nursing at networking events, conferences, or by reaching out via email to the school’s dean, lead clinical coordinator, or faculty who focus on gerontological nursing. Nursing homes located in Pennsylvania can access resources from the Pennsylvania Teaching Nursing Home Collaborative to find local nursing programs that are open to new partnerships.
• Build a team. Include people from multiple departments to help coordinate the partnership. Ideally, they will have both interest and time. Assign roles such as who will work with instructors to design clinical experiences that benefit both the nursing students and residents, and who will manage and teach students during their rotations.
• Establish standing meetings. During the first meeting, nursing home leaders can clearly communicate their goals for the partnership while also hearing from the school of nursing about their goals for students’ clinical experiences. These meetings are an opportunity to create a plan that meets both partners’ needs. Plan for debrief meetings with the nursing home team after students’ clinical experiences to ensure concerns are addressed quickly.
• Orient faculty. Before students’ clinical rotations begin, invite nursing faculty to tour the nursing home so that instructors can get to know layout of the facility, confirm the goals for the clinical rotation, and pre-determine any needs the students might have such as parking or public transit routes.

Embrace Co-Design for Clinical Rotations

• All teach, all learn. Create an environment where everyone can teach and learn from each other. Invite faculty to share new methods of care delivery they are seeing in other settings. Encourage nursing home team members to highlight their care delivery methods that students and faculty may not encounter in any other clinical setting.
• Create a common language. Nursing homes can implement the Age-Friendly Health Systems 4Ms framework to 1) enhance the quality of their person-centered care approaches, and 2) use the 4Ms as a “common language” to ease communication with faculty and teach nursing students essential gerontological nursing skills.
• Leverage “What Matters.” Residents enjoy spending time with students, in particular with the 4Ms “What Matters” activities where residents can share their personal stories and students can improve their interpersonal communication skills.
• Highlight the uniqueness. Nursing home staff can show students that nursing homes are a unique opportunity for nurses to work in an environment that is not only clinical but also residents’ homes, where collaborating across departments is critical to ensuring residents are healthy, safe, and happy.

“We don’t expect this to be a quick fix for our staffing issues, but rather we are planting the seeds for the future,” said Kim Ratliff, RN, director of nursing at Wesley Enhanced Living Main Line.

As nursing schools begin to prepare for the next academic year, spring is the perfect time for nursing homes to rethink and renew their partnerships. The Pennsylvania Teaching Nursing Home Collaborative provides free resources that have been created for and by nursing homes and schools of nursing committed to improving their academic-practice partnerships.

Sophie Campbell, MSN, RN, CRRN, RAC-CT, CNDLTC, is the executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of Directors of Nursing Administration (PADONA).