VCU School of Nursing and VCU Health honored with national award for exemplary academic-practice collaboration

By Joe Schilling
School of Nursing

The American Association of Colleges of Nursing has awarded the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Nursing and VCU Health System the prestigious 2026 AACN Exemplary Academic-Practice Partnership Award. This national honor recognizes an integrated model between the two institutions that bridges clinical care, academic inquiry and community health.

The AACN Exemplary Academic-Practice Partnership Award celebrates member institutions and healthcare systems that demonstrate highly productive, collaborative relationships aligned with the eight AACN/American Organization for Nursing Leadership Guiding Principles and the 2021 AACN Essentials: Core Competencies for Professional Nursing Education.

In an era marked by nationwide clinical staffing shortages and shifting healthcare demands, the VCU partnership stands out as a national benchmark - proving how a research-intensive urban university and Virginia's largest safety-net academic health system can build a bidirectional ecosystem where clinical practice informs the classroom, faculty scholarship elevates bedside care and joint initiatives directly improve patient outcomes.

"Earning this award is a significant achievement and reflects the strength of our collaboration with our School of Nursing colleagues," said Amber Balzer, DNP, director of advanced practice professional development and fellowship for VCU Health. "The application process was extensive and truly a team effort, requiring thoughtful contributions from partners across both organizations."

The partnership rests on deliberately dismantling traditional academic and clinical silos. VCU Health operates VCU Medical Center, an urban academic medical center, as well as VCU Health Community Memorial Hospital and VCU Health Tappahannock Hospital. Less than three blocks away stands the VCU School of Nursing, a nationally ranked institution educating undergraduate, master's, Doctor of Nursing Practice and Ph.D. scholars.

Formalized in 2021, the partnership's executive governance structure includes quarterly strategic sessions among the School of Nursing dean, chief nursing officers, associate chief nursing officers and the associate vice president of advanced practice providers, along with monthly faculty practice assemblies. To ensure alignment across all clinical environments, 70 key stakeholders across 14 focus groups co-designed the shared leadership framework.

"Quarterly gatherings of our respective leadership teams are crucial to building trust between the School of Nursing and VCU Health and to helping ensure the needs of both institutions are met," said Patricia Kinser, Ph.D., dean of the VCU School of Nursing.

Central to this collaboration is a bidirectional model: numerous School of Nursing faculty members maintain active clinical practices embedded across VCU Health units. At the same time, the school's appointment, promotion and tenure guidelines formally recognize clinical practice excellence, allowing five faculty members to earn academic promotion through clinical and scholarly excellence.

"Academic-practice partnerships cannot simply be administrative agreements on paper; they must live and breathe at the bedside and in the lecture hall," said Lana Sargent, Ph.D., associate dean of practice and community engagement in the School of Nursing. "Our tripartite mission of teaching, scholarship and service works because the exchange is truly bidirectional. When our faculty practice inside a Level I trauma center, they bring current clinical complexities and evidence-based innovations straight back to our students. In turn, our students and scholars analyze real-time health system data to solve operational challenges, advance health equity, and elevate the standard of patient care. We are educating nurses in the exact environment where they will lead and heal."

The collaboration has transformed nursing workforce development across Central Virginia. Between 2021 and 2026, the undergraduate nursing programs doubled, now training more than 650 undergraduate students, most of whom rotate directly through VCU Health facilities. At the graduate level, 237 health system clinicians have mentored 727 advanced practice students, completing 77,890 clinical hours - including 17,899 hours overseen directly through faculty practice.

To foster retention and career mobility for frontline healthcare workers, the partners established a guaranteed admission pathway into the RN-to-BS for VCU Health System registered nurses holding associate degrees. VCU Health supports these nurses by reimbursing application fees and providing tuition assistance, while the School of Nursing maintains dedicated web portals and streamlined application reviews.

After being hired into the health system, new graduates enter an enterprise-wide nurse residency program that recently earned a 10-year Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education accreditation. With School of Nursing faculty serving on the advisory board and guiding curriculum delivery, the program enrolled 318 nurse residents in CY2025 alone - nearly a third of whom graduated from VCU. The program boasts an 87.1% one-year retention rate (up from 86% in CY2024), with 90.5% of participants successfully advancing to Clinical Nurse II within 24 months, vastly outpacing national retention averages.

"The AACN Exemplary Academic-Practice Partnership Award is undeniable proof of our shared commitment to measurable outcomes and practice readiness," said Mary Marshman, DNP, chief nursing officer at VCU Medical Center. "Thanks to this partnership between the School of Nursing and VCU Health, graduates enter our workforce with clinical judgment, hands-on experience, and knowledge of VCU Health nursing practices that ensures they are ready to contribute effectively from day one."

Beyond workforce numbers, the partnership drives healthcare quality improvement. DNP projects linked directly to health system strategic priorities have expanded from six in spring 2023 to 55 projected through 2027.

These efforts have also led to substantial financial impacts through cost-saving for the health system and increased patient satisfaction metrics. Demonstrating the health system's commitment to advanced practice leadership, the health system appointed an advanced practice provider as its first associate vice president of quality and safety.

Scholarly dissemination has flourished concurrently. Collaborative teams have produced more than 30 conference presentations, 46 grand rounds sessions, six jointly funded research grants totaling over $128,000 and seven peer-reviewed publications in journals such as the Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, the American Journal of Critical Care and The American Surgeon.

The partnership's impact reaches deep into medically underserved communities across the region. Through the Mobile Health and Wellness Program, faculty and nursing students deliver preventive and chronic disease care across eight rural and urban communities.

The 2026 AACN Exemplary Academic-Practice Partnership Award affirms the VCU School of Nursing and VCU Health's shared vision: an academic-practice model that transforms nursing education into measurable community wellness and bedside excellence.