SIF111 Small Patients

Project Manager: Christine Kennedy, School of Nursing

Small Patients. Great Challenges. Transforming Clinical Scholarship-at the Cusp of the 21st Century: The purpose of this award is to invest in graduate programs and achieve Top 10 national rankings in both educational and research domains.

BoV Approved: June 2017

Project Dates: 7/12/2017 – 7/11/2021

Total Funding: $2,244,546

Executive Summary

This SIF award seeks to invest in transformative graduate programs and achieve Top 10 national rankings in both educational and research domains for the School of Nursing. This will be achieved beginning with the two newest graduate programs using four strategic approaches: 1) amplifying research in the degree programs to create clinical scholars; 2) offering scholarships to highly competitive students who currently are in a gap target area; 3) develop faculty depth in digital learning for the 21st century; and 4) create innovative collaborative teams of nursing scientists, clinicians and teaching faculty which will lead to higher productivity and success in an increasingly competitive external funding world. Success and lessons learned will aid implementation across the other five SON graduate specialties.

Current Status: Completed

Achievements

The investment of SIF funding transformed the curriculum of two specialty programs—Neonatal Nurse Practitioners and Pediatric Nurse Practitioners-Acute Care (NNPs and PNP-ACs) with a  multi-faceted approach that:1) incorporated a robust research immersion at the Master’s level, 2) enhanced education tools with digital learning 3) provided scholarships to recruit an  exceptional and diverse group of students and 4) increased our grant funding by partnering research faculty (tenure track) with our clinical faculty (general academic) into clinical scholar teaching and research teams.

A core impact team fully implemented the digital learning aim: strategic planning of digital/tech educational activities offering faculty training opportunities focused on pedagogy and technology over the course of the semester. This work targeted faculty teams who developed and implemented learning activities in hybrid courses and technology-enhanced residential courses. This enhanced the School's development and delivery of high-tech courses and labs with digital health technology. 

Our work included both incremental successes and moments of transformational change. Research was woven into the student experience based on faculty programs of research. Activities included a secondary theme analysis of data from a qualitative study examining mother’s experiences providing oral care to their premature infants. Other students collaborated with faculty on an internally funded study examining cultural competency and promoting meaningful global engagement with students at UVA and in Rwanda.