Nursing plans to expand partnerships

In her nursing practice at the Madison Community Health Center, School of Nursing Professor Linda Baumann sees and helps treat what theorists call “the vulnerable population” of the city: men, women and children who likely have little or no health insurance and whose financial resources are sorely limited.

In her role as an educator, Baumann also sees firsthand the intensifying shortage of registered nurses to care for an aging population — and the consequent need to develop creative ways to provide health- care services.

In yet a third role as associate dean for academic nursing practice, Baumann has been working for the last year on a plan that may address both of those issues — and enhance the school’s already well-established research programs to boot.

Baumann is leading the School of Nursing’s effort to coordinate and expand clinical practices by the school’s faculty. Individual faculty members already have a number of well-established partnerships with hospitals, clinics, health centers and social service agencies around the area. Baumann’s goal is to formalize and broaden those linkages to provide services more efficiently, conduct research and enhance learning opportunities for nursing students.

“There is a great deal of intellectual capital we can leverage from our faculty,” Baumann says. “And nursing needs that capital perhaps more than ever right now, because we’ll never get enough nurses to fill the needs. Therefore, we have to look at creative ways to deliver services to people, and having these practices organized more formally will allow us to test some innovative models of practice.”

What could that mean for patients? Consider the possibilities, for example, of a group clinic appointment, in which six to eight patients with chronic medical problems would get together with a nurse to share information about how to manage their disease. Diabetic patients, for example, could learn together how to conduct a foot check correctly. Tests of this intervention elsewhere show that patients are very satisfied with the care and attention they receive in the group appointment setting, and nurses value both the chance to spend more time with their patients and the efficiency of reaching several people at once. As the nursing shortage grows in the coming years, the ability to deliver health care efficiently will become a necessity.

Beyond service to patients, having a formal program of nursing practices can benefit both the educational enterprise as well as research efforts. While the effort is still in the “vision” stage, Baumann is putting together the infrastructure that will enable the practice initiative to being operating in about a year. A steering committee has been working to identify campus resources that could be available to launch the effort.

“Our goal is to serve the community while enhancing the other parts of our mission as a school,” Baumann notes.