Faculty practice: unifier of nursing education and nursing service?

The Practice Role in the Academic Nursing Community

The practice role of nurse educators has emerged as a mechanism to unite practice, research, and education. The long-term outcome of such a synthesis should be an improvement in the quality of nursing care delivered to clients. Clinically focused nursing research designed by nurse educators who maintain a practice role or nurse clinicians who maintain a teaching role has the potential to unify and thus advance the profession. The authors discuss the historical background from which the practice role evolved, and efforts of recent nursing leaders to facilitate the incorporation of the nursing practice role by educators. Models for faculty practice are identified, and advantages of faculty practice are reviewed. The authors also describe barriers to the establishment of faculty practice, contemporary developments impacting faculty practice, and research needed to advance faculty practice. Nurse educators in many academic communities in the 1990s are discovering that not only must they produce scholarly work in addition to their teaching and service to the university and community, but that they may also be under growing pressure to be engaged in clinical practice. This pressure may be self-imposed or may be an expectation of their colleagues in nursing education or the administrators of their nursing programs. The focus of this research brief will be to describe the historical background from which this "new" role evolved, to discuss strategies or models developed to facilitate the faculty practice role, and to identify faculty practice issues that have emerged with the adoption of this role in academia. An additional focus will be to critically review faculty practice-related research performed since Chicadonz' (1987) review.

Relationships Among Faculty Practice Involvement, Perception of Role Stress, and Psychological Hardiness of Nurse Educators

This study examined the relationships of role stress and psychological hardiness and identified predictors of role stress in nurse educators overall and in those either involved or not involved in faculty practice. In addition, the study examined differences in psychological hardiness and role stress between nurse educators either involved or not involved in faculty practice. Data were obtained through three mailed self-report questionnaires from 871 nurse educators employed full-time in a National League for Nursing (NLN)-accredited school of nursing with both undergraduate and graduate programs. The findings revealed significant negative correlations between role stress and psychological hardiness and between components of role stress and components of psychological hardiness. Predictors of role stress were identified. No significant difference was found in role stress or in psychological hardiness between nurse educators involved and those not involved in faculty practice.

Education-practice partnerships: faculty practice as faculty development

The importance of establishing service-education partnerships in nursing is well recognized. Many such associations will include provisions for faculty practice, ideally occurring within the context of a comprehensive program that advances clearly stated goals put forth by all participants. We describe the continuing clinical education component of faculty practice, and discuss its place within a hypothetical, broader program. Faculty practice is conceptualized as one aspect of ongoing faculty development.

Nurse faculty practice: from theory to reality

This article discusses the developmental stages involved in moving the concept of faculty practice from theory to reality. Bennis, Benne, and Chin's theories for planned change and Hage's theory for organizational change with a dominant coalition form the theoretical bases for this redical innovation. Smith's Time Line serves as the framework for tracing the development of the plan over its 6-year history. The political, logistic, and financial promoters and constraints at each stage of development are identified. Faculty reaction to the idea of faculty practice is presented, and the mechanisms used to bring about group consensus are described. The key elements for the successful transition of this plan are a small and resilient group of faculty planners and adaptation of existing organizational systems to accommodate nursing's interests. Finally, the practice plan is presented at its present stage of development with its future goals.