Project Increases Nursing Faculty, Encourages Cooperation with Other Hospitals
7/15/2008
As healthcare organizations nationwide wrestle with how to address the growing nursing shortage, a newly expanded project led by Cleveland Clinic is quickly resulting in more nurses in the local market. Instead of promoting just the positive aspects of nursing careers to generate interest in the field, the project focuses on connecting current nurses with nursing schools to increase the number of faculty available to teach the thousands of already interested students.
The Deans’ Roundtable Faculty Initiative is an ambitious partnership between Cleveland Clinic and Northeast Ohio’s schools of nursing designed to aggressively address both the nursing shortage and “the other shortage”: the lack of nursing faculty available to teach interested students, resulting in long waiting lists at nursing schools. In 2004, the Northeast Ohio Nursing Initiative (NEONI) reported that in Northeast Ohio alone, nearly 1,500 qualified applicants were denied admission to a school of nursing, in large part because of schools’ inability to secure sufficient faculty.
“Longer life expectancy is increasing the need for nursing care at a time when the average age of a nurse and nurse educator is 48 and 54 respectively. We have a serious imbalance between an aging nursing workforce and a society requiring more healthcare,” said Joan M. Kavanagh, R.N., Education Director, Nursing Education and Professional Practice Development at Cleveland Clinic. “While it is exciting that we no longer have a lack of people interested in becoming nurses, unless we address the critical shortage of faculty, we’ll never truly have an impact on the nursing shortage.”
The Deans’ Roundtable Faculty Initiative has created a free online database that connects experienced nurses interested in teaching with nursing schools in need of adjunct faculty. With its ability to advertise jobs, archive resumes and match special skills with the needs of schools, the database is blending aspects of online job sites and online dating sites to alleviate the nursing shortage.
Since its soft launch in March 2007 by the nursing leadership at Cleveland Clinic, the website has proven to be effective by matching 50 qualified nurses with faculty positions at nursing schools throughout Northeast Ohio. New nurses taught by the additional teachers are already working in the field. One of the schools that is benefiting most from the Faculty Initiative is Notre Dame College, which was able to successfully launch a new nursing program with the aid of several adjunct faculty hired through the database. Thanks to its warm reception from Cleveland Clinic nurses, the database is now open to any nurse with at least a bachelor of science in nursing, further expanding its potential impact.
The Deans’ Roundtable, established in Fall 2005, is comprised of members of the nursing leadership at Cleveland Clinic and the deans and directors of area nursing schools. Members have a shared commitment to enhance the regional supply of nurses by addressing the nursing faculty shortage.
Cleveland Clinic initiated the first meeting of the Deans’ Roundtable and has provided support for its efforts throughout its history, including funding the development of the database, facilitating testing of the site among Clinic nurses, and hiring a full-time program analyst to manage the database and serve as liaison with the schools. Now that it has proven to be successful among Clinic nurses, the Deans’ Roundtable is collaborating with nursing administrators at University Hospitals, MetroHealth Medical Center, the Veterans Administration, Summa Health System and other area hospitals to encourage their nurses to teach as well. Instead of viewing each other as competitors for the same pool of candidates, the Deans’ Roundtable Faculty Initiative has successfully resulted in positive cooperation among area hospitals and healthcare organizations.
“We’re committed to further developing and promoting this project in the region, and we’ve traveled in Ohio and out of state to share our strategic effort with others,” said Michelle Dumpe, R.N., Associate Chief Nursing Officer at Cleveland Clinic. “With dedication and minimal resources, this type of collaboration could be recreated elsewhere with a similar positive impact on nurse staffing and ultimately, patient care.”
The Deans’ Roundtable provides support along the way to interested nurses by providing educational programs and a quarterly newsletter authored by faculty from area schools that help prepare the prospective educators for their new role. Interested nurses can visit the Deans’ Roundtable Faculty Initiative site for more information and access to the database, at www.clevelandclinic.org/facultyinitiative.
About Cleveland Clinic Nursing Institute
The Nursing Institute is one of 26 institutes at Cleveland Clinic that group multiple specialties together to provide collaborative, patient-centered care. The institute includes 3,200 nurses, 300 of whom are advanced practice nurses. All collaborate to provide high quality patient care on more than 40 specialty-based nursing units within inpatient, outpatient and operating room settings. The Nursing Institute’s Magnet status (the highest recognition of excellence in nursing by the American Nurses Credentialing Center) was redesignated in 2008. Cleveland Clinic is a nonprofit, multispecialty academic medical center. Founded in 1921, it is dedicated to providing quality specialized care and includes an outpatient clinic, a hospital with more than 1,000 staffed beds, an education institute and a research institute.
Media Relations Contact
Megan Ferington Pruce, 216.445.7452
