Mesa State College is excited to be a part of the clinical placement technology project. We are committed as an educational partner because of the importance of piloting this important technology in a rural setting outside of the Metro area. Our process for clinical placement is somewhat different than the Metro ACE group and we've worked hard over the last few years to build collaborative relationships among the nursing programs that use St. Mary's Hospital in Grand Junction . The clinical placement technology will greatly assist us in continuing this collaboration and making our clinical planning more efficient in maximizing the limited clinical placements in Western Colorado .
Kristy Reuss RN, Ph.D.
Chair, Department of Health Sciences
Mesa State College
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Background & Structure
Background
In 2005, the Alliance for Clinical Education identified an alarming level of unmet clinical placement needs in metropolitan Denver. Simultaneously, the Colorado State Board of Nursing noted the same concern statewide, and called for a statewide database to track clinical placement supply and demand. The Colorado Center for Nursing Excellence convened a task force of stakeholders from throughout Colorado to define needs and review technologies in use elsewhere. Findings from this group supported the need for a web-based tool and the StudentMaxTM, a platform in use in Oregon was selected as the database to be customized for Colorado's purposes.
The Central Colorado Area Health Education Center (AHEC) provided funds to initially license the platform. Operational funding for the “two-year pilot” was provided locally by The Colorado Health Foundation as part of "Partners Investing in Nursing's Future," a collaborative grant supported by the Robert Wood Johnson and Northwest Health Foundation in response to the nursing shortage.
The “Pilot Project” ended in August 2008 and based on the program evaluation and ongoing support of the partnership, the project has been extended. Financial support for long-term sustainability continues to be investigated. Additional financial support has been provided by the Colorado Center for Nursing Excellence, the Timothy and Bernadette Marquez Foundation and Caring for Colorado.
Mission
To improve the efficacy, quality, and capacity of nursing education through an innovative, collaborative, centralized coordination of a clinical placement technology system.
Structure
The Colorado Center for Nursing Excellence manages the Clinical Placement Project and provides administrative support under the direction of the Clinical Placement Implementation Oversight Committee.
Implementation Oversight Committee is facilitated by Deb Center, RN, MSN, CNS Project Director for the Colorado Nursing Clinical Placement Project and contains representatives from all the clinical and educational partners. This committee represents the first collaborative statewide effort focused on solution-building related to clinical placements and the bottleneck to the nursing pipeline.
The Implementation Oversight Committee meets monthly. Membership is open to all interested schools of nursing and clinical settings statewide; however, only organizations participating directly in the project are entitled to vote and have access to the database.
Student representatives participate in a non-voting, advisory capacity, to provide a student voice to the committee. Students are encouraged to attend the committee and sub-committee meetings.
Non-partner participants are permitted to attend the Implementation Oversight Meetings. These members will serve in an "advisory" capacity to the committee and will not have voting privileges.
If you are interested in attending any of the meetings, please contact the administrative assistant at Placement@ColoradoNursingCenter.org.
For more information, contact Deb Center, RN, MSN, CNS – Project Director, at
(303) 715-0343 or deb@coloradonursingcenter.org .