From nurse preceptor to clinical teaching associate

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This is a collaborative project involving two major medical centers, two schools of nursing, and the Northwest Area Health Education Center (NW AHEC) in Winston-Salem, NC.

In 2002, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing published a report describing a critical problem: Nursing schools were declining as many as 5,283 qualified applicants in nursing programs because there were not enough available faculty.

To combat the faculty shortage in Winston-Salem, NC, the task force members from the institutions listed above shared a common vision. That vision was to move forward with the development of a course that would formally educate nursing staff to become adjunct clinical faculty known as Clinical Teaching Associates (CTAs).

Thirty-two nurses have completed the CTA course which has resulted in the potential for these schools of nursing to significantly increase student enrollment.

Development of this course is an excellent example of the synergy that results when leaders from competing, state-of-the-art healthcare institutions and nursing programs collaborate to ultimately improve patient care. All four institutions of higher learning and health care have innovative leaders who approached crises such as the nursing shortage as an exciting and challenging opportunity to reshape the role of both staff nurses and clinical nursing faculty.