Academic Partnerships to Increase Nursing Education Capacity: Centralized Faculty Resource and Clinical Placement Centers

The North Texas Consortium of Professional Nursing Programs and Practice Partners is a regional academic partnership of nursing education and practice organizational leaders working together to share innovative ideas and best practices and to improve efficiencies that impact nursing education. The region's 15 nursing schools produced 25% of the Texas graduates, or 1,782 graduates, in 2008–2009. Yet, 3,522 graduates are needed in 2013–2014 to meet the projected north Texas demand. Barriers to increasing enrollment and graduation numbers were the lack of sufficient faculty to meet demand and insufficient numbers of clinical placement sites. To increase the capacity for graduating the numbers of nurses needed, the region developed a three-pronged plan to overcome each of these barriers: expansion of partnership members and development of a regional computerized clinical placement center and faculty resource center.The academic partnership expanded its members to include the 15 schools of nursing, more than 50 hospitals, and the Dallas Fort Worth Hospital Council (DFWHC) Foundation for the purposes of governance of the two proposed computerized centers and strategic planning for increased capacity. The faculty resource center is a centralized, one-stop shop for those interested in teaching and those needing faculty. The Centralized Clinical Placement Center is expected to streamline the nursing student clinical placements process and monitor the numbers of students per site at a given time so as to ensure that placements are at capacity and that schools of nursing benefit fairly in placing students in specialty areas to meet course objectives.