Elsevier

Journal of Professional Nursing

Volume 27, Issue 6, November–December 2011, Pages e96-e102
Journal of Professional Nursing

The New Jersey Nursing Initiative: Building Sustainable Collaboration

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The New Jersey Nursing Initiative was publically launched in 2009 as a 5-year, $22 million program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation based at the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce Foundation. It was reauthorized in 2011 through 2016 for an additional $8.5 million. The initiative includes a faculty preparation program and strategic tracks of work focusing on building education capacity, increasing current faculty capacity, making nurse faculty a preferred career, leading policy initiatives, creating sustainable funding in support of nursing education, and ultimately, building local, regional, and statewide collaborative networks. The tagline, “So a Nurse will be there for You,” emphasizes both the reality of an aging nursing workforce needing replacement and the expected health care transformation that will result in the need for new knowledge and skills in the future nursing workforce. The purpose of this article was to describe the New Jersey Nursing Initiative, emphasizing the partnerships that have resulted from the project to date.

Section snippets

New Jersey Backdrop

The backdrop for NJNI was the reality of nursing education with regard to nurse faculty and education capacity and the nursing workforce nationally and in New Jersey, 2006–2008. At that time, New Jersey was facing a projected shortfall of at least 40,000 nurses by 2020 (Reinhard, Wright, & Cook, 2007), with an average nurse faculty age of 55 years and 74 expected retirements of full-time faculty within 5 years (Dickson, 2008). Complicating the ability to meet demand for new faculty were faculty

Structure of the NJNI

Figure 1 depicts the overall structure and relationships of the initiative. The initiative program office has a part-time program director, a full-time deputy director, a program coordinator, and a part-time administrative assistant. The program office reports to a senior program officer at the RWJF. The president of the NJ Chamber of Commerce Foundation (NJCCF) is directly involved in the project. Each of the major components of the initiative is described below with emphasis on partnering and

National Advisory and Leadership Committees

As is the standard for RWJF programs, NJNI has a National Advisory Committee (NAC), although because NJNI is a state-based program, most of the members are from New Jersey. The NAC chair is a well-known nursing leader and president and CEO of the Visiting Nurse Association Health Group, who, as a trustee for a public university and advisory board member for a collegiate school of nursing, is also well connected with higher education in general and nursing education in particular. Other NAC

Faculty Preparation

A hallmark program within NJNI is the FPP. Major goals of this program are to recruit highly qualified diverse applicants into NJ nursing master's and PhD programs and to assure that these graduates are prepared to be excellent teachers and academic leaders. The program offers financial support (tuition and fees, a laptop, and $50,000 annual stipend) for students in select master's and PhD programs for 2- and 4-year full-time study, respectively, and requires development of curricula that

Strategic Work Groups

In addition to the FPP, NJNI has strategic work groups that are focused on tracks of work, including collaboration to leverage resources and develop creative strategies to increase nurse education capacity, creation of innovative approaches to increase faculty capacity, making NJ nurse faculty a preferred career, and increasing sustainable funding. Committee membership varies in terms of constituent representation, including academe, practice, regulation, policy, consumer, and business. At the

NJ Chamber of Commerce Foundation

The NJCCF has facilitated NJNI's work and collaborations in several ways, including hosting meetings of business leaders regarding health and nursing, advocating for new health care models, connecting NJNI with leaders across the state, and facilitating government relations and appointments to meet with, for example, representatives of the governor's front office.

An early goal of the partnership with the NJCCF was to build a business alliance for nursing and health care. The Chamber had

Asset Mapping and Social Network Mapping

Asset mapping is a process of cataloging assets—people, including organizations, associations, and networks; processes, such as better and/or best practices; things, such as curricula and equipment; and places, including higher education institutions and health care organizations (Maher, July 23, 2009). Social network mapping is a tool to help understand constellations that exist and to enhance or expand them. It is also a tactic for identifying people who represent diverse or dispersed assets

New Jersey Healthcare Workforce Advisory Council

The NJ Healthcare Workforce Advisory Council is a statewide council that resulted from a partnership effort among the NJCCF, NJNI, and the State Employment Training Commission (SETC), in which NJNI assisted the SETC in writing a grant proposal for funding from the Health Resources Services Administration (HRSA) in June 2010. The grant provided funds to establish the interdisciplinary council with representatives from labor, health care, higher education, policy, and professional organizations,

NJ Action Coalition

Following the October 2010 release of the Institute of Medicine report, “The future of nursing: Leading change, advancing health,” New Jersey was selected as one of five initial states to begin implementation of the report's recommendations. New Jersey's ability and capacity to be a lead state was directly related to the foundational work of NJNI, which had resulted in a level of visibility, identified leadership, and collaboration that the state was ready to build upon for the future of

Lessons Learned

In a project of this size and scope, there are bound to be lessons learned and that is true for the NJNI, several of which are highlighted here:

  • Strategic planning, decision making, and effectiveness are vital to all collaborative efforts and particularly large-scale projects such as NJNI. A strategic consultant can be very effective in facilitating this work.

  • Honor process while staying focused on the desired results. Building the necessary relationships and trust to establish and sustain

Conclusion

The NJNI has had a number of successes to date that represent creation, leveraging, and use of collaboration and partnerships across the state. The foundational work of NJNI through the FPP, the asset mapping process and leveraging of NJ Chamber relationships, has directly contributed to collaboration building and being able to pull together partners for funding opportunities. The RWJF and NJ Chamber Foundation partnership and the HRSA and PIN grants represent significant first-time results of

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    Nurse residency programs are also included in the nursing action coalition implementation plans of at least four states (Center to Champion Nursing in America, 2013b). Action coalitions, which exist in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, comprise diverse stakeholders that include academic and practice nursing leaders, physicians, consumers, and representatives from governmental and business entities (Bakewell-Sachs, Mertz, Egreczky, & Ladden, 2011; Center to Champion Nursing in America, 2013c; Cramer, Lazure, Morris, Valerio, & Morris, 2013; Green et al., 2011; Hassmiller, 2013). Supported by the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action initiative, the goal of state action coalitions is to advance key recommendations in the IOM report, such as transforming nursing education, leveraging nursing leadership, removing barriers to practice and care, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, promoting diversity, and bolstering workforce data (Center to Champion Nursing in America, 2013a).

The New Jersey Nursing Initiative is a program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation based at the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce Foundation.

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