Academic-Practice Partnerships: The Wave of the Future

Effective academic-practice partnerships are essential for advancing nursing education and meeting clinical practice needs. Educators are increasingly challenged with providing active, kinesthetic learning experiences that engage today’s learners and facilitate theory application to practice. Conversely, clinical practice has been facing severe nursing shortages, which the current Covid-19 pandemic has further impacted. Of note, specialty areas are no exception to the growing trend of short staffing, including interventional radiology. Fewer nurses, the increasing number of radiology procedures, and students’ lack of exposure to radiology nursing are significant obstacles to meeting the future demands of radiology nursing. Partnerships are vital to help mitigate the current challenges in education and practice and to address a widening academic-practice gap. As a result, academia and practice joined forces to develop solutions. For example, faculty from a baccalaureate nursing program collaborated with the administration from a radiology department at a large metropolitan teaching hospital in the Midwest to expand the student nurse learning experience and create a new and sustainable approach to promote the radiology nursing stream.

This partnership focused on developing an innovative learning model called the radiology immersion experience, introducing radiology nursing to second and third-level students enrolled in an undergraduate nursing program.

Implementation Strategies

The radiology immersion experience includes didactic coursework and phased-in clinical experiences for nursing students for two 15-week semesters. Students begin by completing assigned modules that focus on the basic tenets of radiology nursing but also include interdisciplinary team roles and responsibilities. They then receive guided instruction and information by the radiology nursing team at the point-of-care about the nurse’s role in radiology, radiologic procedures, assessment of patients, and measures to promote patient safety. This is followed by one-on-one, hands-on clinical experiences with radiology nurses providing care for patients before, during, and after undergoing radiology procedures. Evaluation of the radiology immersion experience with quantitative measurement of student outcomes will commence in Spring 2022 to determine program effectiveness.

Implications for Nursing Practice

Engaging in effective academic-practice partnerships advances nursing practice by ultimately promoting the patients’ optimal health and safety via communicating and addressing the needs of both education and practice. In addition, these important collaborations advance nursing practice by developing innovative approaches and experiences that enhance student learning, narrow the academic-practice gap, prepare practice-ready new graduates, and address growing shortages by providing early exposure to specialty nursing.

Greg Laukhuf RN ND, CRN, RN-BC, NE-BC, FAARIN
Manager Department of Radiology
Nurse staff, Breast Center, Quality, Compliance, and Vascular Access