Care Coordination and Transition Management: A New Course to Prepare Prelicensure Students.

Background: There is a need for RNs to be skilled at coordinating care and improving transitions within and across a wide variety of clinical settings and in diverse populations. A care coordination and transition management (CCTM) course was developed to address this growing need.

Method: The course was designed to promote enhanced clinical reasoning as well as synthesis and application of CCTM concepts while focusing on the patient and family perspectives.

Journey to a new era: An innovative academic-practice partnership.

Successful academic-clinical partnerships are mutually beneficial for academic nursing and clinical organizations, supporting the long-term success of nursing programs while simultaneously improving patient outcomes. Advocated by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing in their 2016 report, Advancing Healthcare Transformation: New Era for Academic Nursing, this position paper provides six actions for transforming academic nursing. However, developing sustainable academic-practice models has proven challenging despite this roadmap, as research has not substantiated their benefits.

Development of a COVID-19 alternate care site from ground zero: A nursing perspective.

The novel coronavirus disease SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) outbreak rapidly generated an unprecedented global, national, and state public health crisis with the need to rapidly develop alternate care sites (ACS) to care for COVID-19 patients within an overburdened health care system. A hospital care model ACS to increase the health care capacity, provide care for mild to moderately symptomatic patients, and offer local self-sustainment for a surge of patients was developed in Memphis, Tennessee located in Shelby County. We completed a temporary conversion of a large unused newspaper publication building to a health care facility for COVID-19 patients.

A model for preparing faculty to teach model C clinical nurse leader students.

Model C clinical nurse leader (CNL) programs are complex because they must meet the The Essentials of Baccalaureate Education for Professional Nursing Practice and The Essentials of Master's Education in Nursing, as well as the graduate level competencies outlined in the white paper Competencies and Curricular Expectations for Clinical Nurse Leader Education and Practice. Faculty assigned to teach in these programs may be experts in education or areas of clinical specialty, but they may not have a clear understanding of the CNL role to teach and mentor CNL students. This article describes a faculty development model that includes an introduction to the CNL role, course mapping of the essentials, integration of CNL professional values into clinical evaluation, consultation with practicing model C graduates, and participation in a comprehensive CNL certification review course.

Using portfolios to introduce the clinical nurse leader to the job market.

Development of a portfolio is an effective strategy used by clinical nurse leaders (CNLs) to inform prospective employers of their specialized skills in quality improvement, patient safety, error prevention, and teamwork. The portfolio provides evidence of competence relative to the role of clinician, outcomes manager, client advocate, educator, information manager, systems analyst/risk anticipator, team manager, healthcare professional, and lifelong learner. This article describes the CNL portfolio developed by experts from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and Methodist LeBonheur Healthcare.

Using quality and safety education for nurses to guide clinical teaching on a new dedicated education unit.

Gaps exist in health professional education versus the demands of current practice. Leveraging front-line nurses to teach students exemplary practice in a Dedicated Education Unit (DEU) may narrow this gap. The DEU is an innovative model for experiential learning, capitalizing on the expertise of staff nurses as clinical teachers.