Collaborations to improve hospital-based student practicums.

Hospital educators who place students from area nursing schools noted that the information provided to students in orientation to the hospital was being repeated at the beginning of every clinical rotation. This was costly for the hospitals, and monotonous and time consuming for students. The hospital educators collaborated to develop a generic orientation to be given annually rather than every 10 weeks. Realizing they could better accomplish their goals with the involvement of the nursing schools, they formed a second collaboration with administrators and faculties of area nursing schools. After identifying problems, specific requirements were developed to ease the process of clinical affiliations. Both hospital educators and nursing school administrators saw only benefits arising from the new processes.