Bill Klaproth (Host): This is Today in Nursing Leadership, a podcast from the American Organization for Nursing Leadership. I'm Bill Klaproth. And with me is Amy Tootle, Student Nurse Associate Program Manager at the Ohio State University Medical Center. We also have Jackie Buck, Clinical Professor and Executive Director for Academic partnerships at the Ohio State University College of Nursing. And we have Kaitlyn Kolcun, Education Consultant and College of Nursing Liaison at the James Cancer Center and Solove Research Institute at the Ohio State University, Wexner Medical Center, as we talk about building a joint model between the College of Nursing and the academic Medical Center to strengthen student readiness and ensure a smooth transition into RN roles.

Welcome, Amy, Jackie and Kaitlyn. Jackie, I'm going to start with you. And thank you all for being here. So, what prompted your organizations to develop a strong academic partnership?

Jackie Buck: Thanks, Bill. I do want to tell the group that we're thrilled to be here today and really appreciate being able to share our journey in building an academic practice partnership. So over the years, the College of Nursing and our academic medical center have really enjoyed a very strong spirit of collaboration and partnership. And this shared commitment to advancing evidence-based practice has even been recognized nationally. We were honored to receive two academic partnership awards in the past for our work in building a culture of evidence-based practice across our organizations.

But as we emerged from the pandemic, like many others, it became really clear to us that we needed to strengthen and formalize this collaboration. Both of the organizations were evolving and our shared goals were really becoming even more closely aligned. For example, at the College of Nursing, we were preparing for growth in our undergraduate enrollment. And we were also starting to explore new and very innovative clinical learning opportunities for our students.

We were also seeing a great increase in interest in expanding our research and evidence-based practice for both our graduate students and for our faculty. Then at the medical center, the leaders were focused on transition to practice support, recruitment, retention, workforce development. And also, they were interested in expanding opportunities for research and EBP collaboration as well. And I think important across both of these entities, we were focused on promoting wellbeing, building healthy work environments. So, we had this mutual goal as a top priority for both of the organizations.

So as you can see, we had a really clear set of mutual interests really to better support our learners, better support our clinicians, our faculty, and our practice communities. We knew that building a stronger academic partnership could really help us advance both of our mutual interests. So, our next step in building the partnership was, of course, we reviewed the literature on academic partnerships just to understand the best practices and really understand what were successful models out there that we might be able to use to start our work.

But what became evident to us very, very early on as we were building the partnership was a real need to formalize the partnership, and create a structure that would help us focus our collective efforts. So together, we worked on developing a new model called the Buckeye Academic Practice Partner Model, and it is centered on six strategic areas. We have six strategic work groups. And these are co-led by leaders from the medical center and leaders from the College of Nursing. And the six areas that we're focused on are workforce development and sustainability, education and learning, research and innovation, evidence-based practice, wellbeing and healthy work environments and community outreach. So, you can see we've gone back to really the focus on our mutual goals, and our mutual interests.

We really feel this structure is going to position us to build a truly integrated academic practice partnership. A partnership that is going to support our current needs, but also anticipate any future challenges for us as we go forward with the journey. And it's also going to strengthen the nursing profession, which is so important to us. And it'll improve our nursing profession across our entire system.

Host: You've really thought this through, Jackie, very thoroughly. So, are these types of partnerships and collaborations between universities and colleges of nursing—it sounds like it doesn't happen that often. Would that be right?

Jackie Buck: Well, actually it does happen quite often and there is a lot of literature, really that describes the results of these partnerships, which is very promising. For us, we wanted to create a formal model. Again, it just helps us keep focus. Although we've had a strong partnership in the past, we didn't have this formal structure of a model to be able to guide our work. So, that's what's important to us. But again, we're seeing more and more interest in building partnerships in the literature and in the discussion.

Host: Got it. Well, and congrats on those two academic partnership awards. So, Jackie, let me stay with you, which early actions matter most and what key leadership tactics can leaders use to establish meaningful organizational partnerships?

Jackie Buck: Our partnership was really strengthened by a very clear and visible support from our senior nursing leaders. The dean of our College of Nursing and the chief nursing officers at our medical center communicated very early on that advancing the academic practice partnership was a strategic priority for both of the organizations. And I really feel that that level of leadership endorsement is essential for success. It sets the tone. It establishes expectations. And it signals to others that this work truly matters and this work is very important for both of the organizations.

I think equally important is the development of relationships. Not new in leadership research, but development of these relationships across both of the organizations. Effective communication, building a shared understanding and regular engagement really forms the foundation for any successful partnership. And as we began our work, we also identified some core values that we felt would guide our collaboration. And these values include mutual respect, transparency, trust, communication and a shared commitment. Now, these values are also identified in the academic practice partnership literature, but they became the principles that really shaped our approach to the partnership.

Another critical early step was establishing a clear structure and process for our work. And as I mentioned earlier, we created these co-lead roles for each of these strategic areas. And we have what we call our strategic areas, we formed them into work groups. So, pairing leaders from the college of nursing, with leaders from the medical center was our approach and this co-lead model for us ensures accountability. It also provides shared decision-making and shared ownership of the outcomes. We also reviewed the strategic plans of both of the organizations to identify our areas of alignment, but also to establish mutual goals for the partnership.

So, each of our work groups created their own goals and measurable outcomes. And we also implemented a process for regular tracking and reporting the process, which I also think is really important. By providing updates to our senior leaders on our work, really keeps this work visible. It reinforces accountability and also ensures that our efforts remain aligned with our organizational priorities.

So, I think these actions that I've shared really have positioned our partnership for success, sustainability, and meaningful impact.

Host: Well, it's easy to see. You've put a lot of work into this. And absolutely, I think you will achieve those goals. And as you say, getting leadership endorsement at the very top is really, really important to all of this. And then, developing and working all of those relationships as you build this collaboration, it really makes a lot of sense. Amy, why did your organizations decide to focus on new graduate nurse recruitment as a topic of the academic practice partnership?

Amy Tootle: Well, thank you Bill. Thanks for having us today. We're excited to share all of our lessons learned throughout our journey. But really, our organizations prioritize new graduate nurse recruitment as a core focus of our academic practice partnership in response to the ongoing nursing shortage and really the urgent need for some innovative approaches to attract and retain that top talent that's out there.

Strengthening our workforce through deeper collaboration with the College of Nursing is also a key priority in our nursing strategic plan. So with the medical center, last year, preparing to open the largest facility in its history, partnering much more intentionally with the College of Nursing. Became even more of that really a strategic opportunity that we had.

So, we also learned that a significant number of our nursing students were already employed within the medical center as a student nurse associate. We call those our SNAs. And so, that made it sort of a natural progression to jointly develop evidence-based strategies that really helped them transition seamlessly from academic training into long-term roles within that same clinical environment. Also, both institutions really share a strong commitment to increasing intent to stay. That's a metric that's really shaped by factors such as academic support meaningful inclusion and even mentorship.

So by aligning our shared goals and those research-supported strategies, and our new academic practice partnership model, we really just aim to cultivate a supportive, engaging, and welcoming clinical environment where nursing students can truly envision and build sustainable careers within our health system.

Host: Giving them that vision of the future, I think, is really important on where they can go in their career. And we always talk about nurse retention. This is always a big topic. But I'm interested, Amy, how did you address new nurse recruitment as well?

Amy Tootle: So, there were a number of approaches that we've had to take over this past year and a half to really strengthen that new nursery recruitment. And I'll kind of talk a little bit about our different strategies that we've utilized.

The medical center redesigned its student nurse associate program back in 2024. They transitioned it into a tiered model. Evidence really demonstrated that adding those academic competencies that they're learning into their workplace responsibilities really enhanced the student's confidence in their overall satisfaction. So, our new updated structure actually includes three levels of SNAs. There's a sophomore tier, there's a junior tier, and then there's a senior tier. And in addition to the SNA program, the medical center offers a summer nurse externship. It takes place between the student's junior and senior year. It's an eight-week paid experience that really pairs each student with a dedicated nurse preceptor. It also provides two separate four-hour shadowing opportunities across the medical center. And these experiences really allow students to gain a broader exposure to the organization as well as explore areas that may be the best fit for their future careers.

Along with our unique collaboration with the College of Nursing, we have a position that is known as the liaison. Our liaison supports both clinical placements and student engagement. This very innovative role is split evenly between the two entities. And it's really essential and coordinating intentional, very meaningful placements for the students. The liaison meets with all of the clinical groups as well as meets individually with all of our senior students that are in their precepted experience.

And while the liaison is meeting with all of these students, they are offering like detailed information about the SNA role. They're offering information about our externship option. They also talk about transition to practice and the expectations and opportunities that are available in that program. The liaison role has been extremely effective the last year and a half. And we actually just hired a second liaison here within the past month to assist with those purposeful placements and really just improving that engagement with our student nurses.

Another evidence-based strategy that was Implemented really from the findings of the education work group that's part of our academic practice partnership were some new approaches to really ensure that each clinical cohort is feeling welcomed and supported while they're in the medical center. So, anytime that the liaison meets with these students, she collects both positive and constructive "shout outs." And then, she makes sure that she shares all of that feedback with the corresponding units. This new practice has been extremely well received, really improving team morale and even fostering stronger connections across the units.

Over this past year, we learned that having meaningful, purposeful, really progression for those student nurses who are advancing from their SNA role into the externship, and then really having those intentional senior placements, really improves the student experience. It also helps to increase our team unification and completely supports greater confidence as they move into that professional practice role.

Lastly, we also introduced our inaugural signing event. Oh, it was so much fun. It was a major collaborative really between the Medical Center And the College of Nursing. In order to bring this big vision to life, we had to partner very closely with our recruitment teams. We had to partner with our marketing team, our leadership teams played a really big role in our signing event, the hiring managers were involved. We even made sure to welcome Brutus Buckeye so that he would help to energize the celebrations. So, our first event exceeded our expectations. And the enthusiasm in the room was unmistakable. It really created a sense of pride and excitement about joining the academic medical center. For a first year event, it was exceptional And we also were able to walk away with some really valuable insights, and we had some lessons learned that we're already looking forward to this year's event being even better than our first one, even better than last year.

So, just kind of wanted to share with everyone that our poster for the AONL conference does feature a QR code that really will link you right to that video from our signing event. And I'm extremely confident that anyone who watches it will instantly feel the energy and excitement that was captured that day.

Host: When you bring Brutus Buckeye in, I mean, you know it's going to be a success, right? I mean, that's a given, right? I love it.

Amy Tootle: Right. Yes. We love him too.

Host: I got to tell you, Amy, it is easy to see how this has been so well received. Everybody wants to be in an environment like that. Some of the words you used, intentional, meaningful, purposeful, welcome, supported. So, great job on all of this, and it's easy to see again, why this is such a success. And Kaitlyn, let me bring you in. So, this has all been great. But what challenges has the academic practice partnership faced thus far since creation? Tell us about that.

Kaitlyn Kolcun: Absolutely. Thank you, Bill. Yeah, I think we have a lot of success. Successes and a lot of excitement to continue to move the work forward. And I really think that a lot of that has to do with the intentionality of basing this academic practice partnership on those evidence-based practices as Jackie discussed, that that really helped to limit major challenges. But there certainly were still obstacles that we had to overcome.

One of these challenges was scheduling. As mentioned, we have many top tier leaders and administrators, educators, directors, researchers, et cetera, from across the college of nursing and the medical center. And these individuals, as you can expect, have very busy calendars. So, we recognized that there was a need to really be purposeful about scheduling far in advance to hold calendar dates for these academic practice partnership meetings.

We also found that while we wanted to hold in-person meetings to promote the natural networking and collaboration of seeing each other face-to-face, that virtual meetings were necessary because even though we are a centrally located campus with the college of nursing and the medical center right next door to each other, we do have separate campuses for other aspects like a nursing education department and research departments. And even one of our hospitals is more of a community setting out on the east side of town.

We also recognize that there was a need for quarterly meetings to really help to keep momentum going, provide updates amongst the different work groups, and allow for collaboration with those work groups. For example, the workforce work group looked at ensuring processes happening that were related to our education work group, looking at student surveys regarding those clinical placements, and making sure that we were finding ways to continuously improve those placements to promote the ultimate goals of the workforce work group regarding recruitment and retention. Without those touch bases for the large group, we could easily miss out on important collaboration points between those groups.

And then, a second major challenge we needed to overcome was some system incompatibilities between the university and medical center campuses. Both of our campuses use Microsoft Teams, but it's actually two different Microsoft platforms that didn't communicate with each other because Ohio State is such a massive institution. So, we needed to come up with a plan to how to navigate using some shared guest accounts between those teams sites. So. Promoting awareness and just teaching how to navigate to those different aspects.

Host: So, it sounds like you were able to monitor and adjust as necessary. As you got into these programs, you were able to see, okay, we need to change this. We need to modify that. Would that be right?

Kaitlyn Kolcun: Absolutely, and I think that's a big piece, is that ongoing monitoring and willing to be flexible and adjust as needed.

Host: Yeah. And it sounds like you've absolutely done that. And then, Kaitlyn, can you share with us what lessons you've learned about new graduate nurse recruitment?

Kaitlyn Kolcun: Absolutely. In my liaison role, this is the bulk of what I'm doing in terms of these clinical placements and looking at promoting that education for our students. So, lessons that we've learned really included the fact that rounding on students was very time consuming. Maybe not so much in the essence of the time that it took to talk with the students themselves, but rather the time that it took to coordinate the meetings with numerous emails and calendar invites. So, that's really what led to the creation of the second liaison position, as well as we wanted to incorporate more involvement from folks like Amy Tootle, our SNA program manager, and our different nurse residency directors to assist with those rounds.

And then, from those meetings, we really gained that insight into the need to maximize student engagement in the clinical setting to promote not only student learning, which is the whole point of our clinical experiences, but also to provide more assistance so that nurses were willing to work with those students. And ultimately, the more those students felt engaged as members of a team on that unit, the more likely they were ultimately recruited and wanted to come and work in that area. We also found it was really helpful to promote that feedback, the sharing of that good and bad with the unit managers to share at upcoming staff meetings. We shared it with unit directors to keep them informed to really promote buy-in and give kudos when deserved for our nurses that wanted to continue to teach future generations. And it even resulted in us vice versa getting kudos back from the unit to give to our college of nursing clinical instructors. I think that really speaks to the essence of this academic practice partnership in that communication sharing across both avenues.

Some other lessons that we learned included looking at the purposeful placement of our senior SNAs. And we found that there was a need for ongoing reminders and communication to those nurse managers to let us know of any potential upcoming seniors so that we could be very meaningful about trying to place them on future areas of employment units. Then, we're seeing more and more numbers of individuals being purposefully placed and having really positive experiences out of that. So even purposefully placed students from a few years ago that we've continued to grow these placements are now serving as preceptors for our current seniors, which is really cool.

Then, other lessons learned regarding our signing day event is that this event, we originally thought it would be the perfect time to schedule it on reading day, the day between our last day of classes and the start of final exams. We thought it would be a nice open time where students didn't have classes or clinical. But we found out that the College of Nursing is actually way less busy that day. So, it was a little bit less of an exciting environment than we had hoped for with having other students there to witness the fun of the signing day event. We found that other students had other priorities to address like studying for those final exams. So, our goal moving forward was really to avoid signing day and work with our College of Nursing Student Affairs team to coordinate a date when many other pre-licensure students would be on campus to witness that excitement and hopefully promote their own interest in future employment with the medical center. And we also had to be very cognizant to make sure we selected a date, of course, when the seniors would be available and not in their clinical or classes.

And we did find that we had to provide plenty of advance notice for students, faculty, med center staff, so we started sending out save-the-dates so that calendars would be free and folks would be aware of this upcoming event months in advance because we wanted to promote as many faculty and staff and of course, the students to be available and come participate.

Then, we also found that in the first iteration of the signing day event, we actually overlooked inviting our transition to practice our nurse residency directors in that first implementation. So we needed to make sure that we did indeed have all of our stakeholders invited adequately. Of course, big lessons learned were to maintain and continue to boost that high energy. Keeping Brutus Buckeye there, having music playing opportunities for pictures and selfies and videos. We found it was really fun that everybody was clapping as announcements of students were made for their signing and where they were heading, and we had snacks and Buckeye Paws there. So, I think maintaining those aspects were other lessons learned.

Host: Those are really great takeaways And for anyone listening to this podcast, those are all the little details, right, that you may think, "Okay, we got this." And then when the day comes, you're like, "Oh, wait a minute, maybe we should have done this." You talked about save-the-date and keeping the energy up and snacks and all those different things. So, really good insight for sure, Kaitlyn. So, thank you for sharing that with us as well.

Well, I want to thank you all for being on the podcast today. One more question, Jackie, let me ask you this. So, you all have described what a wonderful, as you talked about, collaboration and partnership. You've really thought this through. And it's easy to see why it's such a success. So Jackie, what strategies are in place to sustain this great success moving forward for the academic practice partnership?

Jackie Buck: As you can imagine, sustainability is so important to us. And as we look towards sustaining our partnership, we are intentionally using a lot of the sustainability strategies that are supported in the literature. You know, I really feel one of the most important elements for our sustainment is our formal structure and our model as well as the combined support from our senior nursing leaders. I've talked about that a little bit previously, but their engagement ensures that our goals are going to remain visible. Our barriers can also be addressed quickly and effectively. And leadership presence, as we all know, truly reinforces the long-term commitment required for this work.

Another key strategy is the ongoing development and maintenance of our relationships and building our collaborative teams. The partnerships will thrive. We know this when people know one another, when they can trust one another, and when they can communicate openly with each other and maintaining these connections really, I feel, is essential for sustaining momentum over time.

Regular communication is central to our approach for sustainability. Our work groups meet regularly. They collaborate across all of the work groups and teams, and they provide progress reports on the established goal. These actions keep everyone aligned, but also create accountability for advancing our work.

And then, important too is recognition, and This is another powerful tool for sustaining our partnerships. Celebrating the contributions of both the individual and the teams is important. You know, whether that's through formal awards or informal acknowledgements or organizational recognition, it really reinforces the value of the work and encourages continued engagement. And remember, recognition can take many forms. Even a small gesture can have a very meaningful impact to individuals and teams.

So finally, I want to emphasize the importance of disseminating our outcomes and successes of academic practice partnerships, sharing what we learn. Is only going to strengthen the broader nursing community and support other organizations that are building or refining their own partnerships.

So together, these strategies really will help create the foundation for a sustainable and impactful academic practice partnership that we know will continue to grow, thrive, and evolve throughout the years.

Host: Grow, thrive, and evolve. I love that. And I also like how you said, Jackie, that you have to work on the development and maintenance of relationships. I think that's so important. This is a continual kind of a work in progress. Would that be right?

Jackie Buck: Yeah. And actually I think we have seen amazing progress. People just getting to know each other, even though we're on one campus, we're in separate buildings, but just the work groups working together have really fostered relationships. I can visibly see that and hear that as the teams talk amongst each other.

Host: Absolutely. Oh, can I say you're the dream team. The three of you. You don't need Brutus. The three of you are great. You've really created something special here. So, thank you all for sharing this with us. I really appreciate this. Thank you so much. Once again, Amy Tle, Jackie Buck, Kaitlyn Kolcun, thank you so much for your time today. I really, really appreciate this. This is really wonderful.

And for more information, you can visit aonl.org. And if you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social channels. Check out the full podcast library for topics of interest to you at aonl.org/nursing-leadership-podcast. This is Today in Nursing Leadership. Thanks for listening.