Stephen R Marrone
Long Island University, USA
Title: An academic-practice partnership for preparing the next generation of professional development specialists: A best practice model
Biography
Biography: Stephen R Marrone
Abstract
Professional Development Specialists are often appointed based on their clinical expertise rather than their skills as educators. Moreover, mainstream Nurse Educator graduate programs primarily prepare nurses for the nurse educator role in the academic rather than the service setting. Therefore, the purpose of this presentation is to describe an academic-practice partnership designed to meet the need to prepare the next generation of Professional Development Specialists within a large, urban, multi-site health system. The graduate program faculty and the health system nursing leadership worked jointly to identify common goals. The goals were twofold: to academically prepare current health system nursing staff as Nurse Educators who would be able to 1) fill current and future Nurse Educator vacancies within the health system, and, 2) serve as clinical faculty for the school of nursing. The partnership is ongoing and has, thus far, demonstrated successful goal attainment. The curriculum and program outcomes were redesigned to prepare graduates for the nurse educator role across diverse settings with increased emphasis on the professional development and advanced direct-care provider role. Courses are delivered using a learning management system and assignments are based on actual clinical, educational, ethical, and legal situations encountered in clinical practice and in the academic setting. The curriculum is grounded in theories of teaching and learning and evidence-based best practice in educational design, test construction, and evaluation. Formative and summative outcomes are monitored and reported for continuous program improvement. Best practices and lessons learned will be explored.