SHSU’S School of Nursing and four Houston-area hospitals have developed and are scaling up a unique and promising teaching model that could help ease the critical nursing shortage facing Texas.
The program, Shared Nursing Academic Practice Partnership Initiative (SNAPPI), tackles the statewide nursing shortage by focusing on bottlenecks, specifically a shortage of nursing faculty.
SNAPPI funding includes a $999,500 grant from the Texas Higher Education Coordination Board’s Nursing Innovation Program Grants.
The SNAPPI model developed by Sam Houston State University removes barriers and facilitates nursing education by creating:
1) A time “buy out” in which a nursing school partners with a healthcare facility and buys 12 hours, typically one shift, of a nurse’s time for them to train nursing students at their existing workplace, at their same pay, within the bounds of their usual schedule.
2) A boot camp for prospective nurse educators that trains them on teaching practices.
3) A manageable training cohort of 6-10 students who work with the SNAPPI nurse trainer for a semester, building bonds and enhancing hands-on training.
