The Centralized Education and Nursing Departments: Collaboration or Collision?

Headnote

When the people in the education and nursing departments collaborate on a daily basis, viewing each other as allies in meeting educational needs, a powerful coalition results. Time is spent in implementing effective programs instead of drawing lines in territorial power plays. Programs are based on reliable communications from all levels of the organization. And best of all, these people enjoy working together, seeing problem areas as opportunities to create better educational programs for everyone's benefit.

Introduction

Hospital-wide staff development educators not only provide orientation, inservice and continuing education for all employees, but also have the additional challenge of working closely with the large and powerful nursing department. If the nursing administrators are familiar with only the traditional nursing inservice model within the nursing department, conflict may arise between the nursing and centralized education departments in deciding the educational priorities between nursing and the rest of the hospital.

Managersand instructors within a centralized education department can use a deliberate approach to collaborate effectively with the nursing department. A realistic perspective, credibility, visibility, support to nursing personnel who have educational functions and effective use of informal communications can enable educators to maximize the resources of both the nursing and education departments.

Background

Gatzke and Yenney define a centralized education department as existing "wherever a hospital's educational and training activities are centralized and coordinated and departmental lines are crossed in a collaborative effort to identify and meet educational needs."1 King explains that hospital administrators believe a hospital-wide centralized education department is more cost effective in accreditation and documentation goals, has advantages for programming perspectives and is more effective in coordination of educational programming."

However, Stevens states that if an agency has a centralized education division, the "nursing division is in a weak condition regarding its own education."3 King elaborates on this by stating that nursing directors are concerned "about changeover to a hospital- wide "education model including control, quality and quantity of programs, needs identification, communication and accountability."'

With these concerns in mind, howdohospitalwide educators achieve their own goals while at the same time earning the respect of the nursing department? The attitudes of the individuals involved are the starting point to create a climate of collaboration.

Individual Perspective of the Top Administrators Responsible for Nursing...