Supporting Research Central to Achieving the IOM Recommendations

The Program: EIN Cycle 3

Consistent with EIN’s mission, projects will typically address aspects of teaching productivity and faculty preparation in nursing education for meeting the demands of a reformed health care and public health system. Findings should inform strategies for addressing the nurse faculty shortage while expanding the nurse workforce and maintaining or improving student outcomes.

For this 3rd cycle, two tiers of funding will be considered for studies of up to 24 months in duration: grants of up to $100,000 might support case studies, scans of existing programs, or determinants of best practices; grants of up to $300,000 might support survey research or controlled evaluations.

We seek studies whose findings will directly inform strategies to prepare faculty to educate nurses for roles in the reformed health care system envisioned in the IOM report, improve recruitment of faculty by better understanding barriers and facilitators (e.g., differentials in salary and status) and developing incentives for addressing them, and optimize use of existing faculty expertise to expand teaching capacity and enhance quality.

Examples of specific topics and research questions that merit attention include but are not limited to:

• Preparation of faculty to teach second-degree students in accelerated pre-licensure programs -

  Second degree students constitute an increasing proportion of pre-licensure graduates. Their success in clinical roles as well as their promise in progressing to advanced training may depend upon whether their education addresses their distinctive status and needs.

• The role of academic faculty in RN-to-MSN or RN-to-BSN programs -

  Providing existing registered nurses further didactic education is an efficient way to increase their competence and qualify them to continue their education to receive advanced degrees. The potential for launching high volume programs outside of the typical academic milieu compels attention to strategies for assuring their quality.

• The role of academic nurse faculty in inter-professional education -

  The IOM report recommends that schools of nursing promote inter-professional collaboration, particularly among students in medicine and nursing, by designing joint classroom and clinical training opportunities. Among many other factors, faculty readiness to address the challenges of implementing effective interdisciplinary education will be central to its success.

• Career decision-making among doctoral students (PhD as well as DNP) in nursing -

  Expanding the roles of nurses in key areas of health care, envisioned by the IOM recommendations as well as health care reform, will require greater faculty capacity to prepare the workforce but may also exacerbate the faculty shortage by increasing the attractiveness of career alternatives for doctorally-prepared nurses. A greater understanding of considerations that influence career decision-making among advanced doctoral students will be critical in addressing this prospect.

• Strategies for addressing disparities in nurse faculty salaries to improve recruitment and retention efforts -

  Fulfillment of the recommendations of the IOM committee as well as workforce provisions of health reform – promoting practice of nurses in roles that require the full extent of their education and training — will depend upon capacity of faculty to prepare nurses for those roles; yet salary differentials that exist between nurse faculty and nurses working in new roles envisioned by the IOM report may intensify the faculty shortage and undermine efforts to realize the goals of these initiatives.

• Effectiveness of strategies for leveraging the expertise of existing faculty to teach more doctoral or undergraduate students in nursing -

  Lack of expertise to offer, essential courses in established doctoral programs and insufficient capacity to expand undergraduate offerings to meet the needs of qualified undergraduate students may impede student progress, constrain admissions, distort the match between faculty capabilities and the courses they teach, and/or diminish the quality of faculty work-life. Sharing faculty resources across universities through online graduate courses that address gaps in offerings to on-campus students offers one remedy as does sharing desktop simulations or other critical teaching modules for incorporation into the curricula of existing undergraduate courses.

• Preparation of staff nurses to serve as clinical preceptors in a clinical education model for pre-licensure degree students -

  Constraints on capacity to provide quality clinical education for pre-licensure students serve as a bottleneck to producing more nurses; reliance upon staff nurses as preceptors is increasingly considered by schools as a potential solution, but there is widespread concern about adequate preparation for this role.
  000 each were announced in October 2010.