Collaborative partnerships for nursing faculties and health service providers: what can nursing learn from business literature?

Collaborative partnerships between nursing faculties and health service providers are the cornerstone of successful clinical experience for nursing students. The challenge of providing an optimal learning environment can be enormous given the turbulent and rapidly changing environment in health. This paper uses the business literature to examine what nursing can learn from business about the development of successful collaborative partnerships. The characteristics of sound partnerships are described and a set of best practice guidelines is developed. The guidelines summarise the factors considered to be essential for the effective development of collaborative partnerships. In these times of nursing shortages and high turnover high quality, collaborative partnerships between nursing faculties and the health care sector are seen as a possible solution to optimise clinical learning and therefore graduate preparedness.