This Collaborative pairs Age-Friendly Health Systems and structured Academic Practice Partnerships to transform nursing education and enhance the nursing home workforce, ultimately advancing the quality of care provided to older adults.
Through this Collaborative your team will receive access to resources, learning sessions from State and National experts, and a community of organizations committed to providing excellent care to older adults in nursing homes. These materials and resources are free and curated for nursing homes and schools of nursing BY nursing homes and schools of nursing!
The Teaching Nursing Home Collaborative is…
… a network of like-minded organizations dedicated to improving the care of older adults in nursing homes.
… a platform for connecting to and enriching academic-practice partnerships between schools of nursing and nursing homes.
… a resource bank of Age-Friendly Health Systems tools for nursing homes and schools of nursing.
History of Teaching Nursing Home Collaborative
The Revisiting the Teaching Nursing Home Pilot Initiative (2021-2023) implemented a contemporary version of the Teaching Nursing Home model in Pennsylvania. This initiative demonstrated how enhanced partnerships between academic nursing schools and nursing homes improve resident care, student education, and staff support. Drawing upon existing resources from the Age-Friendly Health Systems and the original Teaching Nursing Home model implementation from the 1980s the Revisiting the Teaching Nursing Home (RTNH) Pilot illustrated the varied benefits of a formalized academic practice-partnership combined with a practice framework on nursing home residents and Careforce, nursing students and faculty. The momentum and promising outcomes of the Pilot has 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.
Advanced Practice Partnership (APP)
Academic Practice Partnerships are common in the health sciences. Many well-known partnerships exist between University medical schools and hospitals. However, the same collaboration between other health sciences and other practice settings exposes students to valuable clinical learning opportunities. The formation of academic practice partnerships between nursing homes and schools of nursing has a strong evidence base that benefits students, nursing home staff, and nursing home residents.
Age-Friendly Health Systems
Age-Friendly Health Systems (AFHS) principles offer a transformative framework that transcends traditional boundaries, allowing us to enhance the quality of care provided to older adults and the quality of education provided to students. Becoming an Age-Friendly Health System entails reliably providing a set of four evidence-based elements of high-quality care, known as the “4Ms,” to all older adults. The 4Ms are practiced as a set.
What Matters: Know and align care with each older adult’s specific health outcome goals and care preferences including, but not limited to, end-of-life care, and across settings of care
Medication: If medication is necessary, use age-friendly medication that does not interfere with What Matters to the older adult, Mobility, or Mentation across settings of care
Mentation: Prevent, identify, treat, and manage any change in mentation- delirium, depression, and dementia across settings of care
Mobility: Ensure that each older adult moves safely every day to maintain function and do What Matters