HCGNE Collaboration

The strengths of each Center provide an opportunity for synergy in activities involving collaboration across two or more Hartford Centers of Geriatric Nursing Excellence. HCGNE collaborative initiatives are an important approach to addressing critical issues in the field of aging.

These collaborative initiatives include:
- Geropsychiatric Nursing Collaborative
- Nursing Home Collaborative
- Special Issue of Nursing Outlook

Geropsychiatric Nursing Collaborative Initiative

In 2008 the John A. Hartford Foundation awarded the American Academy of Nursing and the Universities of Arkansas, Iowa, and Pennsylvania a four year collaborative project to improve the mental health care of older adults. The Geropsychiatric Nursing Collaborative (GPNC) is designed to help improve the training of nurses in the care of depression, dementia and other mental health disorders. The collaborative effort will establish 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. Building upon the competencies, curricula will be developed for basic, graduate, post-graduate, and continuing education nursing programs. For more information please see the GPNC Website.

Nursing Home Collaborative

Since the early 1950's, when the federal government first required states to establish some form of licensing for nursing homes, the nursing home industry in the United States has grown to serve millions of people in tens of thousands of facilities. Initially conceptualized as providing long-term care, nursing homes have evolved over the past twenty years to include multiple levels of care for residents with high levels of acuity and or highly complex care needs. This change, along with complex funding and regulatory structures that have developed over time, have created challenges for those who care for residents in nursing homes, including nurses. The HCGNE Nursing Home Collaborative was formed in 2006 to address these challenges. In 2008 the NHC (renamed the Center for Nursing Excellence in Long Term Care) and NHC Pain Initiative moved to Sigma Theta Tau International.

Nursing Outlook Special Issue

A special issue of Nursing Outlook, the journal of the American Academy of Nursing, presented a crosscutting analysis of the collective accomplishments of the Centers of Geriatric Nursing Excellence during their first five years of funding. Writing teams composed of Hartford Centers of Geriatric Nursing Excellence directors, faculty and staff developed each paper for the volume. Each writing team included at least one participant from each Center. Teams described models for developing geriatric nursing curriculum, implementing best practices, increasing capacity of research on health issues of older adults, recruiting students into the field of geriatric nursing, developing leadership skills, and conducting practice and research through strategic partnerships.
Volume 54, Issue 4, Pages 169-256 (July 2006-August 2006)