The John A. Hartford Foundation Geropsychiatric Nursing Collaborative American Academy of Nursing

Grant Summary

The John A. Hartford Foundation has made a grant to support the creation and dissemination of standard competencies and curricula in geropsychiatric nursing to improve the nursing care of older adults and better serve their mental health needs. The grant will support the establishment of a core set of geropsychiatric nursing competencies for all levels of nursing education that will articulate the essential knowledge and skills required by nurses to assure that high-quality mental health care is provided to older adults. These competencies, established by a working group representing major national nursing organizations, will be disseminated to all nursing schools nationwide. Building upon the competencies, curricula will be developed for basic, graduate, post-graduate, and continuing education nursing programs. Additionally, a Web site will be designed to make public the competencies and curricular materials, and two regional workshops will be convened to disseminate geropsychiatric curricular content to graduate nursing programs.