Partnerships

I'm back to one of my current key areas of interest  - the partnerships that are forged between service providers and universities. I have re-read an interesting article in Nurse Education Today (Casey, M., 2011. Interorganisational partnership arrangements: A new model for nursing and midwifery education. NET, 31, 304-308) in which the obvious (but very pertinent) assertion is made that the development of nursing education requires support from both clinical and academic partners. Casey points out that the implementation of frameworks for partnership working will facilitate a responsive approach to the development of education for contemporary nursing practice. Her model incorporates context (the purpose of the partnership), environment (internal and external factors and relationships), input (an implementation strategy), processes (e.g. decision-making, conflict management), skills (in the facilitation of collaboration), outcomes (the resulting interactions), and the role of co-ordinator (for the building of strategic alliances) as the core concepts of a framework for partnership. None of these come as any surprise, but what is useful is to see them together within a framework as a basis for taking partnership working forward. I am sure that we all do well in some of the areas - but do we take a strategic and planned approach within a framework of engagement for our partnership working?