Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies

First 1,000 Days Suncoast: Regional Initiative Transforming Care for Babies and Their Families

2023-10-29T04:36:33-05:00

A child’s first 1,000 days are a period of rapid brain development; negative environments and stressful events can impact their lifelong health, well-being, resiliency, and prosperity. First 1,000 Days Suncoast is a tri-county initiative in southwest Florida comprising 90 partner organizations supporting families and babies by connecting them with resources and tools through a large and comprehensive network. Following the Collective Impact model, the region’s public community hospital was designated as the backbone organization, with a nurse-led team guiding the operations. A steering committee, with leaders of regional nonprofits and foundations, ensures tactical alignment with county priorities, and has been key in building a strong partner infrastructure. Three key components guide the activities of the initiative: care coordination; parent empowerment; and targeted interventions. Through collaboration with community professionals and parents, the initiative identifies the most pervasive barriers to care for families and develops innovative solutions. This method has led to system-wide transformations, organization-specific enhancements, and process improvements.

The Power of Nursing Innovation in Planetary Health

2023-09-20T06:46:32-05:00

We live and work in a time of unprecedented disruptions to our planet’s natural systems. Nurses, as frontline workers and stewards of health, care for the health consequences of these environmental changes in emergency rooms, clinics, and homes around the world. The nursing workforce is well-positioned to act as a critical early warning system for detecting and forecasting threats to human and planetary health, and to lead in aligning health and planet co-benefits in research, education, policy, and practice. To respond to these threats, nurses are reimagining roles in which they shepherd the transformative shift in the ways we live with the planet to restore health and balance for all species. With their instincts for creative problem solving and complex systems thinking, as well as their proximity to patients’ needs and experiences, nurses are natural innovators and trusted partners in healing. For nurses, the grand innovation challenge of planetary health means taking on the planet as our patient, with more opportunities to partner at scale to achieve better health outcomes. Planetary and global health has been identified as a key area of nursing innovation by the American Nurses Association (ANA), one of the United States’ leading national nursing organizations. This article provides a primer on how nurses are using collaborative partnerships and innovations in planetary health. It highlights the work of the ANA Innovation Advisory Committee on Planetary and Global Health as well as nurse leaders advancing planetary health from the community to the global level. Contributing authors explore the space between planetary health, nursing innovation, and partnership, illustrating how nurses are leading work to redesign and amplify their roles in caring for both people and the planet.

Unlocking the Future of Nursing Education and Continuing Professional Development By Embracing Generative Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Language Models

2023-08-07T08:34:38-05:00

The rapid evolution of technology calls for innovations in nursing education and continuing professional development (NCPD) that are crucial for maintaining high-quality health-care delivery. As lifelong learners, nurses require effective and motivational educational resources that support their ongoing growth and enable them to adapt to changing health-care landscapes. Generative AI models such as OpenAI and Advanced language models such as ChatGPT present opportunities to enhance learning experiences and support knowledge acquisition. This article explores the potential of incorporating both generative AI and advanced language models in NCPD programs, focusing on design strategies, implementation, and possible challenges. By leveraging these innovations, nursing professionals can access personalized, on-demand, and interactive learning resources, advancing their professional growth and improving patient outcomes.

Infusing Mental Health in Design Education: A Case Study on Transdisciplinarity and Empathy as Mediums for Innovation

2023-11-25T20:09:11-06:00

Riane Eisler’s partnership model capitalizes on mutual respect and benefit to empower all relations, an approach that is instrumental to teaching around mental health. Many of the thoughts, urges or behaviors associated with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) revolve around spatial characteristics of interior built environments. Yet little has been studied on how to infuse such complex problems into design education, which can transform the lives of patients and their families in ways that are both sensitive to students as well as empowering. This paper uses a series of introspections to unpack the lessons learned from a transdisciplinary partnership between an interior design and a product design faculty member who, through a product design studio course, tackled the challenge of designing for youth living with OCD.

Three primary themes of reflections and lessons are analyzed: transdisciplinarity, empathy, and course structure. As the analysis reveals, future pedagogical efforts on transdisciplinarity must account for fit - from course objectives to timeline – along with the time and energy needed; a more nuanced approach to empathy must be adopted where the possibility to overwhelm and instill fear in students are balanced with innovation; and fusing research into the design curriculum and course structure must be situated within a more fluid process and also centered on outcomes.

Patient Care Device Technology Transformation: Nurses Seek Partners to Achieve Patient Care Excellence

2023-09-20T06:35:41-05:00

Nurses make up the largest segment of the health-care workforce worldwide (World Health Organization, 2020). Nursing is fundamentally a process of innovation, where creativity and problem-solving are leveraged to co-create optimal outcomes for each patient and family. Throughout history, nurse innovators have contributed significantly to health-care research, quality, safety, and improved outcomes. Unfortunately, nursing innovation is often not well recognized, respected, or utilized, and most patient care devices and technologies currently in use were not developed by or even with direct consultation with nurses. Nurses seek transdisciplinary partners to develop devices and technologies to transform health care and achieve optimal patient outcomes. This article highlights the experience of five nurses partnering with other disciplines to bring nursing innovations into practice, introducing a vision for patient care devices and technologies developed by a committee formed through the American Nurses Association. Sharing these experiences and vision is a call to interdisciplinary colleagues to recognize nurses’ needs, skills, and efforts - a call to partner with them to install devices and technologies into health care that can achieve patient care excellence.

Planting Seeds of Innovation: A Quality Improvement Project to Advance Nursing Innovation

2023-12-20T14:32:08-06:00

Background: Emerging needs of the 21st century, such as workforce shortages, increasing supply costs, and rising complexity related to chronic disease management, equitable care, and declining health outcomes have made it imperative for the health-care industry to form new business, operational, and care models. Many nurses struggle to see themselves as innovators or to find their professional skill sets being used to change the current health-care paradigm. The nursing profession can address the complexity within health care through innovative leadership across the continuum of care.

Method: The Planting Seeds of Innovation (PSI) model was created in 2015, by a Doctor of Nursing Practice student working in partnership with a School of Nursing and an academic health center located in the United States. The goal of the PSI model was to empower nurses to lead, develop, adopt innovation, and design principles as a part of their daily practice. A day-long PSI workshop introduced innovation and design principles to practicing hospital nurses with the intent of helping them to learn how to embed innovation into their practice so they can lead new solutions for health care. Evaluation of the PSI event used a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods. In-depth interviews were conducted before and after the event to determine baseline knowledge of innovation and the impact of the PSI event on their awareness and application of innovation principles. Before the PSI event, interview questions invited all participants to share their perceptions, experiences, learning needs, and expectations. After the event participants were asked to assess creativity, design, and innovation at the personal, team, leadership, and organizational levels. They were also asked to evaluate their organization’s culture and observed partnership behaviors.

Results: Participants reported feeling empowered when they were given the skills necessary to create intrapreneurial and entrepreneurial solutions. The design of the PSI event which emphasized partnership-based health care and the importance of interdisciplinary teamwork improved participant learning. The event shifted how participants felt about their personal ability to lead change and impact the future of professional nursing practice.

Discussion: At every level, health care needs to actualize the potential and ingenuity of every team member. Innovation and interprofessional partnerships are necessary components of nursing education and practice in this new era. Nurses are in an ideal position to design and innovate models of care to transform health care.

Artist's Statement: Grief

2023-06-28T15:54:29-05:00

Artist statement for the cover art of IJPS Volume 10, Issue 2: Grief, Paper and mixed media.

Changing the World One Story at a Time

2023-09-26T11:48:49-05:00

What if there is a way to transform society and create a more caring, equitable, and connected world? The Power of Partnership (POP) podcast brings you the people who are working to do just that: people who are helping to build a world that values caring, nature, and shared prosperity. They are applying the Partnership ethos, the ground-breaking alternative to Domination systems that are at the root of our most pressing challenges. In this article, POP podcast producer and host Cherri Jacobs Pruitt provides an overview of how the podcast started and what listeners can expect from each episode.