Developing a Collaborative Relationship between a Rural Hospital and a University

The U.S. Department of Education and the Health Resources and Services Administration are encouraging collaborative relationships between nursing education and service. This article explains how a rural hospital and the nursing department of a public university worked together in utilizing SimMan® to create a collaborative biannual competency event for the registered nurses at the hospital. Three different perspectives are given in this article; one perspective is offered by an assistant professor at the university, another by the division director of nursing of the rural hospital, and a third by an emergency medical technician–paramedic employed by the rural hospital. Given the cost of technologies such as SimMan® and the need to break out of our educational and service silos, collaborative relationships are imperative in the future of health care.