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American
Academy of Nursing receives major grant to
prepare faculty, Nurses to Care for an Aging
America
Newswise — The John A. Hartford Foundation
has awarded the American Academy of Nursing
(AAN) a $9.3 million grant as part of an
expanding effort to reshape America’s
healthcare workforce.
The award will help prepare expert geriatric
nursing faculty to teach the next generation
of nurses about the unique needs of the
growing number of older patients.
The new grant builds on more than $21
million in funding provided by the Hartford
Foundation since 2000, through which the AAN
has developed the Building Academic
Geriatric Nursing Capacity (BAGNC)
Initiative.
In that time, BAGNC funded 155 post-doctoral
scholarship and pre-doctoral fellowship
awards.
Of
this group, 82 have become faculty members
and have already taught geriatric nursing to
nearly 12,000 nursing students across the
country.
“The BAGNC is an important part of the
larger effort required to ensure that nurses
emerge from school better prepared to care
for the older patient population they will
inevitably face,” said Patricia Archbold,
DNSc, RN, the BAGNC Program Director at the
AAN.
“It is a long-term investment. The program
supports the development of expert geriatric
nursing faculty who, throughout their
careers, will ignite passion for care for
elders among nursing students, conduct
needed research on geriatric nursing care,
and provide leadership to improve health
care for older patients.”
Part of a Broader
Healthcare “Re-Tooling”
The multi-year, multi-million dollar award
comes in the wake of a recent groundbreaking
report from the Institute for Medicine
(IOM), “Retooling for an Aging America,
Building the Healthcare Workforce.”
This recommends broad investments in
geriatrics training and care to address the
emerging and future needs of a growing older
adult population.
“As the largest ever generation of older
Americans continues to make powerful
contributions to our families and
communities, the medical community must be
better prepared to meet their unique needs,”
said Jack Rowe, MD, Chairman of the IOM
Future Health Care Workforce for Older
Americans Committee, which developed the
report, and a Professor at the Columbia
University School of Medicine.
“Nurses are a critical part of the
healthcare workforce, serving on the front
lines caring for millions of older adults.
"But
too many nurses, like other health
professionals today, do not get sufficient
geriatrics content in their training and
education.”
A Multi-faceted
Investment
The AAN grant has multiple pieces that
address a variety of the IOM report’s
recommendations. First and foremost, funding
will expand the number of trained geriatric
nursing faculty who will teach this and
subsequent generations of nurses.
It will also build geriatric nurse
leadership capacity through a series of
conferences and create a Nursing Care
Blueprint for Older Americans in 2030.
Ten nursing schools across the country
already designated as Centers for Geriatric
Nurse Excellence will collaborate on this
plan.
“Our ten-year goal is to have one faculty
member with geriatric expertise in at least
half (approximately 650) of the country’s
1,300 nursing schools,” said Corinne Rieder,
EdD, Executive Director of the Hartford
Foundation.
“This grant will enable the BAGNC program to
support 60 new scholars and fellows and,
along with the 155 scholars and fellows
already supported, should yield enough new
faculty to make significant progress towards
our goal.
"In
turn, each nurse educated by these faculty
members has the exponential capacity to
change how millions of older adults are
cared for and treated.”
A Challenge for
Nursing, the Country
The program’s impact is ever more important
given the country’s aging demographics. More
than 37 million Americans are over age 65
and that number will almost double by 2030.
According
to the IOM report, although older Americans
account for just 12% of the population, they
are responsible for 26% of doctor’s office
visits, 35% of hospital stays, and 90% of
nursing home use.
The large and aging boomer generation will
only increase these percentages in the years
ahead.
Given current levels, there may never be
enough geriatric nurse specialists to care
directly for those over the age of 65.
“The BAGNC scholars,” said Archbold, “will
not only build geriatric nursing
competencies among thousands of
undergraduate nursing students—the nurses of
the future—they will prepare the faculty of
the future as well, through their work with
masters and doctoral students.”
In addition to the Hartford Foundation, a
number of other funding partners are also
supporting new investment in the development
of geriatric nursing capacity.
Atlantic Philanthropies recently granted
BAGNC $2.8 million in renewal funding to
support 19 post doctoral nurse fellows, and
the Mayday Fund has provided funding to
support nurse scholars doing research in the
field of geriatric pain management.
About the Building
Academic Geriatric Nursing Capacity (BAGNC)
The American Academy of Nursing launched the
BAGNC in 2000 with funding from the John A
Hartford Foundation and in partnership with
the American Academy of Nursing.
The program produces expert researchers,
academicians and practitioners who are
already beginning to lead the field of
gerontology nursing and ultimately improve
care of the elderly. The program includes
nine Hartford Centers of Geriatric Nursing
Excellence and the distinguished Claire
Fagin Fellowship Award and Scholarship
Awards Programs. For more information,
please see:
http://www.geriatricnursing.org/.
About the John A.
Hartford Foundation
Founded in 1929, the John A. Hartford
Foundation is a committed champion of
training, research and service system
innovations that promote the health and
independence of America's older adults.
Through its grantmaking, the Foundation
seeks to strengthen the nation's capacity to
provide effective, affordable care to this
rapidly increasing older population by
educating "aging-prepared" health
professionals (physicians, nurses, social
workers), and developing innovations that
improve and better integrate health and
supportive services.
The Foundation was established by John A.
Hartford. Mr. Hartford and his brother,
George L. Hartford, both former chief
executives of the Great Atlantic and Pacific
Tea Company, left the bulk of their estates
to the Foundation upon their deaths in the
1950's.
Additional information about the Foundation
and its programs is available at
www.jhartfound.org.
About the American
Academy of Nursing
The American Academy of Nursing anticipates
and tracks national and international trends
in health care, while addressing resulting
issues of health care knowledge and policy.
The Academy’s mission is to serve the public
and nursing profession by advancing health
policy and practice through the generation,
synthesis, and dissemination of nursing
knowledge. For more information, please
visit:
www.aannet.org.
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