Building Academic Geriatric Capacity through Doctoral Course Sharing

Purpose/Aims: The mission of the National Hartford Centers of Gerontological Nursing Excellence (NHCGNE) is to enhance and sustain the capacity and competence of nurses to provide quality care to older adults through faculty development, advancing gerontological nursing science, and facilitating adoption of best practices. Of particular concern has been the development of sufficient numbers of faculty prepared to teach gerontological nursing at all levels of education. As a strategy to meet this mission, a new consortium relationship was created between NHCGNE and the Nursing Education Xchange (NEXus) to increase the offerings of doctoral level distance-delivered courses. This paper will describe the innovative consortium effort between NHCGNE and NEXus, designed to build and sustain academic capacity.

Rationale/Background: The NHCGNE Board of Directors examined methods to increase academic capacity in geriatric nursing. Since NEXus existed since 2004 as a proven course sharing consortium, the NHCGNE Board approached NEXus to determine whether a new consortium could be created, allowing NHCGNE programs to participate in the course sharing. Of particular interest, NEXus included both PhD and DNP courses in its catalogue, expanding the options both for preparing faculty to teach geriatric nursing and clinicians to provide care to the elderly in rural and urban communities.  

      The method selected for the new NEXus/NHCGNE consortium was the creation of a Memorandum of Understanding, which outlined the relationships, roles, and responsibilities of the parties. Schools joining NEXus would become full academic collaborators. In addition, the MOU outlined an opportunity for schools to receive awards to cover the first year of membership in NEXus and in NHCGNE if they signed a NEXus MOU by December 2014. As part of the MOU, NEXus agreed to reduce its membership fee for the first 3 years of membership for those joining through the award. Inclusion criteria were identified for the award, the RFP was issued, and participants were selected. NEXus staff provided two webinars to assist in educating the selected participants on the procedures that need to be accomplished in order to join NEXus.

Outcomes: Four schools responded to the first RFP and one more responded to the second RFP. All were accepted to the program. Case Western Reserve University became the first new member of NEXus and began offering courses in Fall 2014. The remaining programs are still in the process of working through the administrative processes on their campuses.

Conclusions:  The Hartford/NEXus model is resulting, as intended, in the addition of programs that have demonstrated strength or high potential for expertise and curricular strength in gerontological nursing. Subsequently, there has been an expansion of elective courses for doctoral students offered by those joining NEXus. The schools of nursing benefit by being able to offer elective courses through NEXus, reducing the pressure for each school to offer multiple specialized courses in an environment of economic constraint. Students benefit by taking courses from faculty they would not ordinarily meet. This new consortium model has high replicability for other nursing specialties that would benefit from the shared courses and faculty resources.