About the Program
The United States faces an escalating shortage of nurses, driven in part by an aging population and a shortage of available spaces in schools of nursing across the nation. Widespread concern over the nurse faculty shortage is evident in the reports of prominent nursing organizations, as well as in the activities of numerous state workforce centers. As part of its commitment to address issues related to the nurse faculty shortage, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) supported the creation of Evaluating Innovations in Nursing Education (EIN) to fund evaluations of nursing educational interventions. » Read More
About the National Program Office
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation established the National Program Office (NPO) to direct Evaluating Innovations in Nursing Education (EIN) in 2008. The NPO, which is located in the Center for State Health Policy at Rutgers University, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, provides overall research direction, management, technical assistance, and monitoring of the EIN grants. Dr. Michael Yedidia serves as director of the NPO and is assisted by Joanne Fuccello, Deputy Director. In addition to administering the grantmaking process and providing technical assistance and monitoring to grantees, EIN is also a research-driven organization.» Read More
EIN is pleased to feature a summary of its current grantees and their projects. Grants have been awarded to seven innovators in nursing education to support evaluations of a range of interventions, including: Dedicated Education Units (DEUs); a technology-rich, accelerated BSN program relying on a mix of on-campus and offsite training, specially prepared clinical preceptors, and innovative course scheduling; and incorporation of a web-based virtual community into the curricula of several nursing programs across the country; the implementation of a statewide education consortium curriculum; the substitution of clinical simulation for supervised hospital rotations; and an analysis of a myriad of state-based, support-for-service programs which offer funding support to nursing students who wish to become nurse faculty.
RWJF-EIN grantees will join a learning community with EIN colleagues who share the goals of conducting evaluations, generating evidence and disseminating findings to promote interventions that expand teaching capacity and promote faculty recruitment and retention in nursing education.
Check back often as we post updates on project research findings as they are released.
This EIN "Grantee Spotlight" features an interview with team members who are evaluating the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh College of Nursing's ACCEL program, a 12-month accelerated bachelor's to BSN program that uses a technology-rich model. EIN interviewed co-principal investigators Dawn Pope, BSN, MS and Jaya Jambunathan, PhD, RN, along with program evaluator Chere C. Gibson, PhD, and Terry L. Gibson, PhD, professors emeriti of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As one of its technology tools, the ACCEL program utilizes the virtual world of Second Life as a means to provide experiential learning to their students. We've included two short video segments to illustrate how ACCEL has integrated Second Life as it is used by faculty and students. » Read more
The EIN NPO recently conducted a national survey of nurse faculty on employment characteristics, work load, and attitude toward academic nursing work-life, which was funded by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. In February 2012, the NPO will launch an interactive Web-based tool, allowing users to easily explore these “benchmarks” and refine results. Please visit our website for updates. [Read more…]
The NPO will assist EIN grantees in estimating the marginal costs associated with implementing the proposed interventions. Because of the variability in.... [Read more…]
January 2012
The EIN NPO recently conducted a national survey of nurse faculty on employment characteristics, work load, and attitude toward academic nursing work-life, which was funded by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. In February 2012, the NPO will unveil an interactive Web-based tool, allowing users to easily explore these "benchmarks" and refine results. Please visit our website for updates. Read More...
January 2012
As part of its Charting Nursing’s Future initiative, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has launched a four-part miniseries of briefing papers that focus on implementing the recommendations set forth in Institute of Medicine (IOM) report (2010), "The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health." Since August 2011, two papers have been released: "Implementing the IOM Future of Nursing Report—Part 1: How to Dramatically Increase the Formal Education of America’s Nursing Workforce by 2020" (August 2011) and, "Implementing the IOM Future of Nursing Report -- Part II: The Potential of Interprofessional Collaborative Care to Improve Safety and Quality" (November 2011). The first report looks at the report's educational progression recommendations and summarizes the ways in which key players around the country are responding. Specifically, the report calls for increasing the percentage of nurses holding the bachelor of science in nursing (BSN) degree or higher to 80 and for doubling the number of nurses with doctorates by 2020. The second brief in the series examines ways to implement the Future of Nursing Recommendations by examining interprofessional practice trends, the types of educational transformation needed to prepare health professionals to provide collaborative care, as well as the policies necessary to assure its delivery.
November 2011
To address the critical shortage of nurse educators, Cleveland State University School of Nursing (CSUSON) recently launched a new Nursing Education Specialization track within its PhD program to train master-prepared nurses for research-oriented faculty positions. This new track’s community-based curriculum is designed to produce nurse educators with expertise in urban issues, and graduates are further encouraged to take on full-time faculty positions thanks to the CSUSON’s Nursing Faculty Loan Program, a loan-forgiveness program established through a grant from HRSA. Read the press release here.
November 04, 2011
New York state-one of the 5 original pilot sites selected to lead the way in implementing the Institute of Medicine's (IOM's) “Future of Nursing” recommendations-may be positioned to be the first in the nation to mandate a BSN for all registered nurses. One of the IOM recommendations is to increase the proportion of BSN-prepared nurses to 80% by 2020, and several forces are in motion in New York towards this end. Some hospitals have begun to require or at least encourage newly hired nurses to obtain a BSN within a set time period. Nursing education programs are beginning to offer financial incentives, in the form of much reduced tuition, for RNs to earn a bachelor's degree. On the legislative end, nursing leaders in the state are working to revive a state legislative bill first introduced in 2005 (which never moved to a legislative vote) which would require all new nurses obtain a BSN within 10 years of receiving their license. Read more here for information on the state of New York's Future of Nursing's Campaign for Action,
November 04, 2011
Accelerated (second-degree or graduate-entry) nursing programs pathways have been in place in the United States since the early 1970s and continue to gain popularity. In response to the nursing shortage, the accelerated pathways are intended to attract individuals with post-secondary education in other disciplines, and allow them to complete nursing education in an abbreviated period rather than the traditional 4-year curriculum. While these programs are more rigorous and standards are higher than the traditional pathways, little research has been conducted on the course facilitators-student, faculty, and environmental attributes that contribute to successful program completion. A new literature review in the Journal of Nursing Education (JNE) summarizes the evidence to date, and identified several themes of academic as well as non-academic facilitators including skills acquired from tertiary education, faculty support, maturation and motivation, and life and career experiences. The article suggests that such knowledge could be valuable in establishing best practices to better attract and prepare prospective students with previous tertiary education.
Click HERE for an abstract of the JNE article
