The Scholar Pipeline Project: Striving to Address Current Staff and Faculty Workforce Challenges (122H)

Literature is replete with documentation of the impact of the coexisting nursing shortage and nurse faculty shortage on patient care delivery. While both shortages had been predicted, the recent events of the pandemic led to a heightened concern from both the professional and lay community. As a result, recently published white papers have directed both academia and practice leaders to develop impactful and sustainable collaborations through innovative and creative opportunities. To that end, a team of educators and clinicians developed a collaborative approach that addresses and works toward a seamless transition from education to practice. The Scholar Project Pipeline, which "strives to address current faculty and staff workforce challenges" was developed as a grassroots effort to build a strong connection between nursing curricula and nursing practice. Specifically, students in their final year of the BSN program at an urban university complete their entire senior year at an integrated community health system that serves both urban neighborhoods and reaches into surrounding rural, agricultural communities. Additionally, faculty scholars from the organization are identified and the expertise of the university is leveraged for their development and deployment. In this session, the authors will outline the tenets of the Scholar Pipeline Project and strategies implemented to meet the nurse and nurse faculty shortage. The session presenters, who represent academia and practice, will showcase the use of strategic thinking to develop a program that meets the needs and demands of health, healthcare and healthcare education. The presenters will describe the process used to develop the Scholar Pipeline Project and share preliminary data collected to determine program effectiveness. The audience will be challenged to expand thinking for application beyond nursing and describe the vast opportunity for leaders to enhance traditional definitions of an academic-practice partnership in healthcare.