Community /Public health nursing students as interdisciplinary collaborators in a federally qualified health center

Federally Qualified Health Centers provide primary care and enabling services to vulnerable populations in underserved communities. Bureau of Primary Health Care (330) funding, combined with revenues from cost-based reimbursement, co-pays and sliding fee scales, and additional supplements from grants and contracts comprise the majority of organizational budgets. Revenues support administrative, health care provider (including mid-level provider) and paraprofessional salaries and other operational costs. While over half of the FQHC's employ nurses assigned to clinical and case management duties, Peoples Community Health Center at Greenmount, the largest of the seven sites, has no such position.

Since 1995 University of Maryland School of Nursing Community Health Nursing Students have provided home visiting, case management/care coordination, and health promotion activities to clients of its nurse-managed health center, Open Gates Health Center. Since 2004, following the assimilation of Open Gates into Peoples Community Health Center under a change of scope agreement, the clinical faculty replicated the model with a more diverse population at the Greenmount site. This new partnership availed UMSON CHN faculty the opportunity to expand the scope of Community health nursing practice both inside and outside the health center walls.

This presentation will describe the process by which students, under the supervision of community public health nurse faculty, assume the community/public health nurse role in the health center. Guidance required by the CHN faculty during the process will be detailed. Examples of student clinical activities, such as engaging in community and internal site assessments to identify potential population level interventions and health promotion and health education programming will be described. Key actions of their case management role and the process by which students engage in home visits to individuals and families will be detailed. Descriptive data of the population served to date and key outcomes of the student engagement process will be outlined. The aggregate impact of the interventions on patient status will be described. The presentation will explore the role and impact of student community/public health nurses as interdisciplinary collaborators in the context of a federally qualified health center.