What is CoP?
Originally based on the theory of situated learning, the CoP has evolved over time to refer to “groups of people” that share a common concern, problem or interest and come together to interact, learn and create, and build and share knowledge.
There are three fundamental elements in a CoP:
Domain – A common ground, sense of identity and shared interest. For the DUSON-CoP, the domain includes teaching, healthcare and best practices delivery.
Community – Members of a specific domain interact, engage, and share information, knowledge, and perspective with one another fostering a sense of belonging and collaboration.
Practice – Members are practitioners. Members develop a shared repertoire of resources, tools, stories, problem solving and experiences that includes identifying and working towards closing gaps.
The goal of the DUSON-CoP is to increase/build academic-community partnerships by creating a venue that:
- Promotes clinical innovation and learning.
- Transfers knowledge and information exchange.
- Supports our community.
- Addresses barriers as a community to meet needs of a changing health care system.
- Increases and enhances preceptor involvement to help prepare our nurse practitioner students for today’s challenging health care system.
The Duke University School of Nursing Communities of Practice is built upon a foundation of collaboration, sharing of ideas and innovation of solutions. Our online CoP provides a platform for the collaborative learning and engagement with our academic, community and clinical partners.
What Makes the Duke University School of Nursing CoP Unique?
CoP is unique from other social groups because it provides an organizational structure that facilitates learning through interactions and relationships. Members of the learning community (nursing faculty, preceptors and students) share common interests and goals, fostering change, accommodation, diversity, mutual respect and teamwork. CoP members share best practices while creating new knowledge. These types of practices are important in today’s healthcare system as members of healthcare communities are moving towards collaborative learning and practice.
Based on the guiding principles from the AACN-AONE task force, we aim to strengthen advanced practice nurses to improve the health care of the general public. Our goal is to build and sustain collaborative relationships between academia and practice sites by establishing relationships through multiple levels in the organization, articulating and establishing shared visions, and setting mutual goals and evaluation periods. We also strive to build and establish trust by sharing conflicts engagement competencies, assuming joint accountability, recognizing each party’s contributions, engaging in a meaningful manner, encouraging mutual investment and dedication, and committing to transparency.
CoP Faculty
Dr. Iris Padilla is an Assistant Professor at the Duke University School of Nursing (DUSON) and the Project Director of the Communities of Practice (CoP) HRSA grant. Part of the grant's goal is to create a collaborative model with mechanisms that builds and enhances academic-community partnerships, support clinical preceptors, and expand the Nurse Practitioner (NP) students' clinical knowledge and skills to provide primary care to patients with multiple chronic conditions in community health centers. Dr. Padilla currently provides primary care to disadvantaged population and serves as a diabetes consultant at a local Federally Qualified Health Center. She continues to serve as a preceptor for many of the DUSON's NP students to prepare nurse practitioner students for the challenges involved in serving disadvantaged populations in today complex health system. This Web-Based Communities of Practice is designed to support clinical educators/preceptors that leads to positive patient and student outcome. Dr. Padilla is the key author of the preceptor website. For more information on the CoP, contact: iris.padilla@duke.edu.
Dr. Kathryn Evans Kreider is an Assistant Professor at Duke University School of Nursing and the lead faculty of the endocrinology subspecialty, a component of the HRSA grant and is the first specialty of its kind for nurse practitioners in the U.S.
About the Program
This project is/was supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under grant number D09HP29967 and title Advanced Nursing Education Grants for grant amount $1,115,194.00; 0 percent financed with nongovernmental sources. This information or content and conclusions are those of the author and should not be construed as the official position or policy of, nor should any endorsements be inferred by HRSA, HHS or the U.S. Government.