Value and vulnerability: reflections on joint appointments.

For more than 20 years, joint appointments between nursing education and nursing service have been recommended as a strategy to foster excellence in nursing education and nursing practice, bridge the theory-practice gap, and promote clinically relevant research. This article discusses the termination of a joint-appointment initiative after research that had demonstrated its success in terms of benefits to both agencies and satisfaction for the incumbents in the positions. It presents the value and vulnerability of joint academic-clinical agency joint appointments based on critical analysis of the academic literature juxtaposed with our research and subsequent experience with four joint appointments between a faculty of nursing and a home-care agency.

Enhancing the quality of home health care.

A strong partnership between clinical practice and nursing education is essential to innovative home health care services. Nevertheless, these two components have not always worked in close association for mutual benefit--bringing the two together has been a continuing challenge. Recently, such an alliance was achieved in Edmonton, Alberta, brought on by necessity and triggered by rapid and substantial changes in both home health care and nursing educational environments.

Caremap management for postoperative prostatectomy care at home: a comparative study.

Objective: To evaluate early discharge from hospital with community-based care as an alternative to hospital-based care for patients who have undergone transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP).

Design: Prospective comparative study.

Setting: A major urban hospital and the urban community.

Care maps across the continuum.

As hospital length of stay decreases and care shifts to the community, there is a need to develop approaches to ensure uniformity and continuity of care in patient groups. Care maps, multidisciplinary standards that outline the processes of care and expected outcomes within predetermined timeframes, can support a continuum of care from preadmission through hospital stay to discharge from community-based home care by clearly delineating standards across the entire episode of care. However, the development of successful care maps requires extensive collaboration, planning and evaluation.