Creating innovative models of clinical nursing education

Although nursing care has changed signifi cantly over the past 30 years, methods to clinically train nursing students have not. The traditional model of clinical nursing education, where a faculty member oversees a group of six to eight students on an acute care unit for a 4- to 8-hour shift, provides a haphazard approach to learning. A need exists to fi nd innovative ways to eff ectively train more nursing students to better prepare them for today's health care environment. Using a change framework, seven approaches to clinical nursing education were created through academic-practice partnerships. These approaches may increase the eff ectiveness and effi ciency of the clinical nursing education system.