North Texas Consortium of Schools of Nursing and Practice Partners

The North Texas Consortium of Professional Nursing Programs and Practice Partners is a regional nursing education and practice partnership working together to share innovative ideas, best practices, and improve efficiencies that impact nursing education. The focus areas include increasing the capacity of professional nursing programs in North Texas to increase the numbers of RNs in the workforce, supporting innovative teaching strategies in nursing education, addressing the changes in health care that new graduates will encounter, collaborating to foster successful transition of new graduates to entry level nursing practice in health care settings, and making North Texas a desirable place for nurses to advance their educations and professional careers. Developing solutions to the many challenges facing education and health care underlies the efforts of the Consortium.

Some accomplishments since the Consortium was established in 2004 include:

• Development, production and dissemination across Texas and the USA of 10 innovative teaching /learning modules for use by faculty (modules focused on the 10 high risk, high volume patient conditions identified by area hospitals).
• Annual Summer Institutes (2005 through present) for nursing faculty and hospital staff educators focused on current issues such as new graduates competency and transition into the workforce.
• Development of a standard hospital orientation module for all students and new faculty.
• Increasing the number of nursing graduates and nursing faculty through hospital - based models of education (grant funded).
• Agreement on standards for criteria related to criminal background and drug screening for students.
• Implementing a computerized clinical placement system among the regions’ nursing programs and hospitals used for clinical placements (grant funded).
• Working with other regions of Texas to develop the computerized faculty resource center as a component of the Texas Nursing Resource Center (grant funded).