Practice Ready. Specialty Focused.^™ Nurse Education Model

Generalist-educated BSN nurses receive opportunity for specialty-focused education and clinical experience, better preparing them for specialty practice

Problem

Many nursing specialties, including perioperative and home health nursing, face a severe shortage. Experienced nurses are retiring due to age, burnout, heavy workloads, and concerns for patient safety. New nurses are entering positions with limited experience in their specialty, which results in many of them leaving within the first year. BSN generalist education, which is critical, means that the onboarding process is significantly longer in their specialty area with the burden for this largely falling on practice sites.

What we are doing

Often-employed, reactive solutions to nurse shortages—overtime, extra shifts, sign-on bonuses—are unsustainable and can negatively impact patient care. For nurses to thrive in a specialty, proactive measures must be taken. In its Practice Ready. Specialty Focused.™ program, Chamberlain complements its existing generalist approach with tools for students to determine which specialties may be the right fit. It built a 16-module online course defined in partnership with a national nursing association, the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN) and recruited partners to provide an eight-week specialty clinical experience. Chamberlain began with perioperative nursing and has graduated more than 300 students. Chamberlain added Introduction to Continuing Health in partnership with BrightStar Care to begin in 2023.