Partnering for health

Above: Christine Mueller, senior executive associate dean for academic programs at the School of Nursing, and Jane Foote, program director for Mayo Clinic Midwest Nursing Academic Affairs. 

The Mayo Clinic has served as a critical partner in providing clinical education since the School of Nursing first began educating Bachelor of Science in Nursing students in Rochester in 2002.

All School of Nursing students in Rochester complete their clinical education at Mayo Clinic hospitals and learn from clinical instructors and preceptors who are Mayo nurses.

“Mayo Clinic has been right there from day one and that’s pretty significant. Their commitment has never wavered,” said Christine Mueller, PhD, RN, FGSA, FAAN, senior executive associate dean for academic programs at the School of Nursing.

Students’ clinical education includes learning from clinical instructors, who are graduate-prepared staff nurses with a joint appointment at both the school and Mayo. In the final semester of their program, students work one-on-one with a Mayo Clinic preceptor to further develop clinical skills and reasoning.

“It is a beautiful partnership in which we bring our strengths of great patient care and expert nurses at the bedside to support their learners, and they bring an educational and scholarship lens into the dynamic,” said Jane Foote, EdD, MSN, RN, CNE, program director for Mayo Clinic Midwest Nursing Academic Affairs.

More recently, the school and Mayo have collaborated to provide clinical education in ambulatory care settings with a new clinical education model, a dedicated education unit.

“Mayo is very interested in transforming health care and health care delivery, and one of their opportunities is leveraging the role of the registered nurse in ambulatory care settings,” said Mueller.

Mayo’s quest is to increase the number of nurses in ambulatory care who are practicing at full scope — where nurses not only obtain health history information, but also discuss health promotion and disease prevention that can result in a more efficient visit with the provider and better outcomes.

“They put a call out to all the schools of nursing that affiliate with them about using the dedicated education unit model and applying that model to ambulatory care. We raised our hands, said yes, we’re interested. This last academic year we completed the co-planning together,” said Mueller.

In a dedicated education unit, nursing students are assigned to a unit, where they work with nurses who have completed clinical teaching training. In this model, the nurses work shoulder to shoulder with students at the point of care, while the university faculty are responsible for evaluation and assisting staff nurses to become confident clinical teachers.

“I don’t know if anybody in the country has done a DEU model with ambulatory care. We’ll be writing about this once we have outcome data,” said Mueller.

Foote added, “This is an innovation for us, and it’s deepened our relationship with the University in ways that are exciting and innovative.”