WOI Join Forces to Ensure a Strong Future for Nursing Homes
Supporting older adults as they age has long been a passion for Women of Impact Karen Feinstein, PhD, and Terry Fulmer, PhD, RN, FAAN, and the foundations they lead. As our population is living longer but often with conditions that make remaining at home more challenging, the need for nursing home care has skyrocketed. Nursing homes, though, have struggled to maintain the staffing levels necessary to deliver this care. Addressing this reality became even more urgent during the COVID-19 pandemic, which revealed to a nation the clinical, financial, social, emotional, and infection control vulnerabilities of our current facilities—for residents and workers.
In response, the Jewish Healthcare Foundation (JHF), through its operating arm Health Careers Futures, sought to pilot a contemporary version of the Teaching Nursing Home model in Pennsylvania. This two-year project demonstrated how enhanced partnerships between academic nursing schools and nursing homes improve resident care, student education, and staff support. This effort was supported in part by grant funding from The John A. Hartford Foundation, marking the beginning of a significant collaboration between the organizations overseen by Dr. Feinstein and Dr. Fulmer.
Drawing upon the original Teaching Nursing Home model implementation from the 1980s and existing resources from the Age-Friendly Health Systems initiative, funded by The John A. Hartford Foundation, the Revisiting the Teaching Nursing Home Pilot (2021-2023) illustrated the varied benefits of a formalized academic practice-partnership combined with an evidence-based clinical practice framework. The momentum and promising outcomes of the Pilot have resulted in the expansion to a Dissemination Phase II (2023–2026), which aims to deepen relationships between schools of nursing and nursing homes within Pennsylvania and on the national stage through the development of the Teaching Nursing Home Collaborative.
The Pennsylvania Teaching Nursing Home Collaborative helps nursing homes and schools of nursing to start or strengthen their academic–practice partnerships, expose nursing students to careers in long-term care, and use the Age-Friendly Health Systems 4Ms framework to transform nursing education and enhance the nursing home workforce, ultimately advancing the quality of care provided to older adults.
Among the noteworthy achievements to date are:
– Connecting with more than 400 nursing homes and 30 schools of nursing in Pennsylvania (reaching 70% of each target audience).
– Publication of Practice and Leadership in Nursing Homes: Building on Academic-Practice Partnerships, a textbook published by Sigma in collaboration with The John A. Hartford Foundation and featuring authors from JHF and Collaborative partner organizations.
– Support of the Moving Forward Nursing Home Quality Coalition to explore policy solutions to the nursing home staffing crisis.
To learn more about the Teaching Nursing Home Collaborative initiative, visit www.patnhc.org.
Jewish Healthcare Foundation: https://jhf.org/
The John A. Hartford Foundation: https://www.johnahartford.org/
