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Celebrating Ten Years of Improving Health Care for Older Adults
Making Best Geriatric Practice
Standard Practice

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Strategy No. 1: Increasing Individual Nurse Competence

Leveraging Success to Increase Aging Content in Nursing Education

To achieve the goal of truly embedding geriatrics into nursing practice, the Hartford Institute and the Hartford Foundation have worked to create lasting structures that ensure enduring improvement. This has been accomplished by leveraging Hartford Foundation funding to obtain additional funding, forging strategic partnerships, and creating lasting programs.

For example, in nursing education, the AACN has embraced the importance of geriatrics, and gerontological content is now integrated into the curricula of most baccalaureate nursing programs. In addition, through a 2005 Hartford Foundation/AACN curriculum grant, the Hartford Institute has asked nursing specialty associations to review and approve educational modules for schools of nursing, thereby assuring that what is taught in the undergraduate programs is consistent with practice. AACN plans to use a "train the trainer" approach to teach faculty and embed geriatric content/techniques in curricula. The focus of the Hartford Institute has also expanded beyond the undergraduate level to the graduate level. Modules being developed include case studies for teaching nurse practitioners about geriatrics. They will utilize a Web-based format that supports self–learning and will keep nurse practitioners current in geriatric practice.

With funding from the Atlantic Philanthropies, the Hartford Institute is reaching out to specialty nurses working with older patients through the Nurse Competence in Aging (NCA) initiative. This $5 million, five-year award supports a strategic alliance between the American Nurses Association, the American Nurses Credentialing Center and the Hartford Institute, and is administered by the American Nurses Foundation. The initiative is working with 55 specialty nursing associations (representing over 400,000 nurses) to incorporate geriatrics and enhance members' competence in aging. NCA also promotes gerontological nursing certification to encourage specialty nurses to obtain dual certification and validate their geriatric competence along with their specialty expertise.

"We've developed educational materials and helped the specialty associations create materials so that nurses in specialty practice (oncology, cardiology, hospice, etc.) have tools that address the specific needs of the population of older patients they are treating," says Dr. Mezey. Many of the associations have added geriatric content to their Web sites, as well. In 2004, the NCA launched www.GeroNurseOnline.org, a comprehensive geriatric nursing resource center that pulls together evidence-based content from several sources, including the Web sites of the Hartford Institute and the 55 affiliated nursing specialty societies. In 2005, the Web site was awarded a Silver Medal from the World Wide Web Health Awards.

The Try This series has also been a vehicle for Hartford Foundation grant leveraging. In 2004, the Hartford Institute developed a partnership and received funding from the Alzheimer's Association to create a 12-issue subset of the Try This series. These issues cover topics that relate to nursing care of hospitalized older adults with dementia and are available on the Institute's Web site and also appear in the newsletters and journals of 18 specialty nursing associations, for an estimated circulation of 150,000. The series is also disseminated through specialty listservs and e-mail newsletters.

In creating a better environment for geriatrics in the world of nursing research, Institute staff found that bringing greater attention to geriatric nursing does not always require large, expensive, funded programs. In some instances networking, encouragement, recognition, and persistence can prove revolutionary. An example is how the talented leaders of the Hartford Institute instigated a major change in the recognition of the accomplishments of nurse researchers within the GSA, and by extension within the larger geriatric academic community. Prior to 1996, there was little recognition of nursing research at the GSA. "A fledgling interest group of about 10 people had begun to meet around a bowl of pretzels," says Dr. Mezey. Today, about 300 nurse researchers meet annually in one of the most vital interest groups of the GSA, and it is known for its prestigious awards program. A significant mark of the success the Hartford Institute has achieved in raising the prestige and value of geriatric nursing research is the selection of Dr. Fulmer, co-director of the Hartford Institute, as the first nurse to hold the position of president of the GSA, in 2005. Visit the Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing Web site: www.hartfordign.org