The American Association of Colleges of Nursing's Geriatric Nursing Education Consortium.

The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) administers several complementary programs to improve nursing care for older adults, including the Geriatric Nursing Education Consortium (GNEC). GNEC, a national initiative with generous funding from the John A. Hartford Foundation and operated in collaboration with the Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing at New York University, is designed to enhance geriatric content in senior-level undergraduate nursing courses. As a result of the GNEC initiative, faculty at a majority of baccalaureate programs at schools of nursing across the country have been educated in the fundamentals of teaching geriatric nursing and the use of geriatric curriculum resources. Using a train-the-trainer approach, GNEC's primary goal has been to support and empower baccalaureate nursing faculty as they champion geriatric education, train other faculty, and oversee revision of the senior-level undergraduate curriculum at their home institutions.

Improving the quality of geriatric nursing care: enduring outcomes from the geriatric nursing education consortium.

The nation's aging demography, few nursing faculty with gerontological nursing expertise, and insufficient geriatric content in nursing programs have created a national imperative to increase the supply of nurses qualified to provide care for older adults. Geriatric Nursing Education Consortium (GNEC), a collaborative program of the John A. Hartford Foundation, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, and the New York University (NYU) Nursing Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing, was initiated to provide faculty with the necessary skills, knowledge, and competency to implement sustainable curricular innovations in care of older adults. This article describes the background, step-by-step process approach to the development of GNEC evidence-based curricular materials, and the dissemination of these materials through 6-, 2-, and a half-day national Faculty Development Institutes (FDIs). Eight hundred eight faculty, representing 418 schools of nursing, attended. A total of 479 individuals responded to an evaluation conducted by Baruch College that showed faculty feasibility to incorporate GNEC content into courses, confidence in teaching and incorporating content, and overall high rating of the GNEC materials. The impact of GNEC is discussed along with effects on faculty participants over 2 years. Administrative- and faculty-level recommendations to sustain and expand GNEC are highlighted.

Ensuring a nurse practitioner workforce prepared to care for older adults: findings from a national survey of adult and geriatric nurse practitioner programs.

PURPOSE: To present the findings from a needs assessment of adult primary care (ANP), gerontological (GNP), and adult acute care (ACNP) nurse practitioner faculty regarding the transition to adult-gerontology NP (A-GNP) programs. DATA SOURCES: Data were obtained from two sources: (a) an online survey to identify the faculty's primary needs in order to facilitate success in this transition and (b) telephone focus groups to explore survey responses in greater depth. CONCLUSIONS: The survey and the focus group findings indicate that there is a strong need for (a) access to a set of nationally recognized competencies for A-GNPs; (b) teaching/learning resources to support faculty in implementation of A-GNP programs; and (c) formal faculty development opportunities to facilitate faculty efforts to engage in curricular redesign and innovations and assure that NP students acquire strong competence in gerontology content. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: The transition to A-GNP has implications not only for NP faculty but also for practicing NPs. Almost all NPs care for older adults in a variety of settings. However, most of these NPs are not specialists in geriatrics. This article provides a context for self-assessment by these NPs of their own needs related to this transition.