The Attending Nurse: An Evolving Model for Integrating Nursing Education and Practice

Abstract

The discipline of nursing continues to evolve in keeping with the dramatic expansion of scientific knowledge, technology, and a concomitant increase in complexity of patient care in all practice settings. Changing patient demographics require complex planning for co-morbidities associated with chronic diseases and life-saving advances that have altered mortality in ways never before imagined. These changes in practice, coupled with findings from sophisticated nursing research and the continuous development of new nursing knowledge, call for realignments of the relationships among academic faculty in schools of nursing, advanced practice nurse administrators, and staff nurses at the forefront of practice. This article offers a model designed to bridge the gaps among academic settings, administrative offices and the euphemistic “bedsides” where staff nurses practice. Here we describe the nurse attending model in place at the New York University Langone Medical Center (NYULMC) and provide qualitative data that support progress in our work.

Teaching Embryology Using Models Construction in Practical Classes

“…Student reports suggest that their family members and friends helped them with ideas to facilitate the construction of the models, such as using a laundry tub to generate the homogeneous mass (see Material and Method). These results are in accordance with many purposes of education (Miranda & Barroso, 2004), like supportive education, with the articulation of knowledge in the community, school and environment, through collective work and could to generate approach between gap in nursing education and practice (Fulmer et al, 2011). Students reports suggests that such purposes…”

A narrative of the attending nurse model implementation

“…The attending nurse model and qualitative outcomes from the model have been described elsewhere [4,5] . The guiding principle of the model is that senior, seasoned nurses, (here we emphasize those in academic and executive roles) should have a regular presence and an impact in the nursing practice learning environment.…”

“…Through several meetings with the lead physician and nurse manager (one nurse manager was overseeing both units due to a nurse manager vacancy), the CNO and the Dean explained the goals of the attending nurse model and obtained support for its introduction [5] . They also engaged the nurse manager, the coordinator of NYU's graduate program in nursing administration and the lead hospitalist to oversee the model's further development and implementation.…”

“…Recognizing nurses' time constraints, the nurse manager tapped the units' charge nurses, asking them to support nurse participation in rounds by covering patients when necessary. An additional part of the implementation process included conducting focus groups with clinical nurses to obtain a preliminary sense of an evaluation plan for the attending nurse model [5] .…”

“…At New York University we adapted and enhanced the attending nurse model to help clinical nurses new to practice and those transitioning into the competent level of practice stand with their interdisciplinary colleagues in processes of collaboration [4,5] . The model brings senior seasoned NYU College of Nursing faculty and NYULMC nurse executives into the practice experience to participate as attending nurses in interprofessional patient rounds.…”