An academic–practice partnership during COVID‐19 pandemic: Transitioning from a clinical to virtual fellowship

Gillett, Claire; Mason, Susan; Fleming, Louise; Mayer, Deborah K.; Bryant, Ashley Leak

AIMS: Discuss the needed modifications that occurred to the academic–practice oncology partnership during the COVID‐19 pandemic. BACKGROUND: To meet the workforce needs of nurses who care for adults with cancer, an academic–practice partnership was created in 2016. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Nursing, North Carolina Cancer Hospital and UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center collaborated to provide structured clinical and didactic practice experiences for undergraduate nursing students interested in oncology nursing. With COVID‐19, nursing students were not permitted to be in the clinical setting. DESIGN: Discursive paper. METHOD: An innovative and collaborative partnership created reflective and interactive activities. The majority of the learning activities were created at the revised Bloom's taxonomy level of application or higher, with some encompassing multiple levels. Students engaged in a variety of meaningful experiences requiring multiple learning processes that promoted professional development in the interpersonal and critical thinking domains. CONCLUSIONS: Despite the challenges of COVID‐19, the delivery of oncology nurse fellowship was successful because of innovative virtual strategies. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: Our academic–practice partnership allowed the nursing students to develop their interpersonal and critical thinking skills without entering the clinical site. This is an approach encouraged by the authors for other schools of nursing. This manuscript is submitted as a Special Issue Discursive Article, and thus, the authors declare that an EQUATOR Checklist has not been used.