Barnes-Jewish College Goldfarb School of Nursing is playing a leading national role in strengthening the nursing workforce through the newly released Academic-Practice Partnership Playbook—a practical guide designed to help academic and health care leaders expand nursing school capacity, improve the practice readiness of new nurses, and build a sustainable workforce.
The playbook is the culmination of more than a decade of collaboration between the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) and the American Organization for Nursing Leadership (AONL). Since 2010, the organizations have worked together to align academic preparation with workforce needs and address shared challenges impacting nurses across care settings.
Angela Clark, PhD, RN, FAAN, Goldfarb president, serves as co-chair of the AACN–AONL task force on academic-practice partnerships, the group that developed the playbook. In this role, she helps guide national strategy on how schools of nursing and health care systems can work together more effectively.
“I wanted to be a part of this because coming from a more traditional academic setting and then moving to Goldfarb and BJC, I was able to think differently—on a full continuum of the nursing career,” Dr. Clark says.
To support this work, AACN and AONL convened a joint academic-practice advisory committee made up of dyads of academic and practice leaders from across the country. The committee was charged with evaluating emerging workforce challenges, developing strategic priorities, and creating a comprehensive guidance document that highlights exemplary partnership models, including financial strategies and leadership approaches.
“Who better to solve workforce challenges than those leading the workforce?” Dr. Clark says.
The playbook includes practical tools such as exemplar case studies, financial modeling guidance, and templates for memoranda of understanding (MOUs)—resources designed to help nursing and academic leaders engage their executive leadership teams and move partnership ideas into action.
Goldfarb’s own collaboration with the BJC East Region (BJC HealthCare) is featured as a model for what is possible when education and practice are closely aligned. One example is the BJC Full-Ride Scholars Program, a model launched in 2022. It’s grown into the largest program of its kind in the country.
“As a health care system, we need strong academic partners to meet today’s workforce demands,” says Tommye Austin, PhD, MBA, RN, East Region senior vice president of Patient Care Systems and chief nursing executive. “This playbook reflects the kind of intentional collaboration required to prepare nurses for practice while supporting long-term workforce sustainability.”
Maggie Wolf, DNP, RN, NNP-BC, Barnes-Jewish West County Hospital chief nursing officer, recently joined the task force and represents the practice perspective. “Academic-practice partnerships allow us to reimagine and shape the future of nursing. By uniting education and practice, we strengthen nurse readiness, build workforce sustainability, and elevate patient care,” she adds.
For Dr. Clark, Goldfarb’s proximity to BJC’s academic medical center campus is what makes this work especially powerful. “I don’t know another academic leader with this level of access to what’s happening in practice. It fundamentally reshapes how I think about our role as an academic institution, and I love that,” she says.
Launched nationally in November, the playbook is now being shared across AACN and AONL conferences, positioning Goldfarb and BJC as national leaders in advancing the future of nursing through meaningful academic-practice partnerships.