Tufts nursing project awarded $250,000

WATERTOWN, Mass. – The Tufts Health Plan Foundation has been awarded a two-year grant of $250,000 to support a collaboration between Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Hampshire to develop a regional approach to nursing education, aiming to train more nurses – and train them better.
The foundation, established last year by Tufts Health Plan to promote healthy lifestyles and improve health care, is one of 19 foundations nationwide to receive funding from Partners Investing in Nursing’s Future, a national initiative to help address the long-term shortage of nurses across the country.
The Tufts project is called “Creativity and Connections: Building a Regional Nursing Education Framework.” It will involve nurse leaders from academia and from the health care provider community and try to reach a broader range of nurses than previous efforts.
The project’s goals include increasing the number and diversity of nursing faculty through scholarship support; increasing nursing school capacity through the use of a centralized clinical placement system; and designing a nursing education curriculum throughout New England that better meets the needs of the current health care environment.
“This regional collaboration is a testament to hospital associations, nursing organizations, nursing education and practice leaders, foundations, state governments and other stakeholders working together for sustainable solutions,” said David Abelman, executive director of the Tufts Health Plan Foundation, in a news release.
“This grant reinforces the partnerships between education and practice settings in our state that are necessary to maintain an educated nursing work force for the future,” said Jean Marie Rocha, vice president for clinical affairs at the Hospital Association of Rhode Island and co-leader of the Rhode Island component of the initiative. All five academic nursing programs and 13 hospitals in the state are participating, she said.
The “Partners” initiative is led by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Northwest Health Foundation. It aims to test innovative ideas locally that can be shared nationally with an exponential effect on the nursing work force shortage. All the funded projects involve foundations with local partners.
The project that Rhode Island is involved in grew out of a joint effort by the Massachusetts Hospital Association and the Mass. Department of Higher Education to identify the reasons for the Bay State’s nursing work force shortage.
That effort managed to increase the availability of clinical placements and worked with nursing programs on new approaches to educating nurses. The Tufts Health Plan Foundation provided funds for a nurse scholars program to help meet the growing need for nursing faculty, and to broaden the approach to a regional scale, Rhode Island and New Hampshire were invited to join the project.
In Rhode Island, the Edward J. and Virginia M. Routhier Foundation will be providing additional funds for nurses who commit to teaching nursing in Rhode Island.
“This grant is an exciting opportunity for us to expand the work we have been doing in Rhode Island to increase nursing faculty, increase nursing school capacity and prepare nurses to meet the demands of today’s complex health care organization,” said Dayle Joseph, dean of the School of Nursing at the University of Rhode Island and co-leader, with Rocha, of the Rhode Island part of the project. “We will have the opportunity to share best practices with other states in the region and learn from one another as we all are dealing with similar issues around nursing school capacity and the need for increasing nursing faculty.”
For more information about Partners Investing in Nursing’s Future, go to www.PartnersinNursing.org.