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Teaching Nursing Home Program records
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Held at: University of Pennsylvania: Barbara Bates Center for the Study of The History of Nursing [Contact Us]Claire Fagin Hall, 418 Curie Boulevard, Floor 2U, Philadelphia, PA, 19104-4217
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the University of Pennsylvania: Barbara Bates Center for the Study of The History of Nursing. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
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The Teaching Nursing Home Program was a national program funded and developed by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, cosponsored by the American Academy of Nursing, and administered by the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Nursing. University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing faculty Mathy D. Mezey, R.N., Ed.D., F.A.A.N, and Joan E. Lynaugh, R.N., M.S.N, M.Phil. oversaw the program. Mezey served as Director of the TNHP and Lynaugh as the Associate Director.
The $6.7 million, five-year program (1982-1987) aimed to improve nursing home care through linking nursing homes with schools of nursing. It also aimed to teach hands-on geriatrics to nursing students and research methods in nursing homes. The success of the national program was modest, critics claim it was a failure, and it was not renewed after its original five years. However, for the field of geriatrics, the program was a pioneer. The interest in nursing home care research and the increased awareness and improvement of nursing care in nursing homes mark its significance.
The ideas behind the program came in 1981 from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Linda Aikens. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, increased nursing home scandals, claims of mistreatment, and the growth of the elderly population in “nursing” homes became issues. Aikens saw the need for high-level care at nursing homes. She also noted the increasing isolation of nursing home nurses from mainstream American health care and from academic nursing. Inspired by the link between medical schools and use of doctors in public hospitals and veterans hospitals, Aikens and the RWFJ created a similar program for nursing homes.
Fifty-three schools applied to the program in 1981, and eleven were accepted to participate. They were Western Reserve University, the Catholic University of America, University of Cincinnati: College of Nursing and Health, Creighton University, Georgetown University, the Oregon Health Sciences University School of Nursing, Rush University School of Nursing, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, State University of New York at Binghamton School of Nursing, University of Utah College of Nursing, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Each university was affiliated with at least one local nursing home, and active participation came from both sides. Applications were preliminarily reviewed by the University of Pennsylvania staff before sending complete and incomplete applications to the TNHP Advisory Board and consultants for review and scoring.
The objectives of the program, as developed by the administrators at the University of Pennsylvania, were to increase quality of care, including the physical and psychosocial well-being of residents; to increase interest in geriatrics at the schools of nursing; to improve staff development; and to ensure financial survival beyond the grant’s funding. The University of Pennsylvania oversaw the day-to-day progress of the program. They supervised the progress of sites in developing affiliations with nursing homes, the faculty involved in the clinical teachings at the nursing home, as well as the students’ development and education during their time in the nursing home. The university’s staff was also tasked with actively publicizing the program through papers, articles, presentations, and speeches. Consisting of RWJF members, University of Pennsylvania staff, and outside consultants, the Advisory Board members managed the program development, approved applications to the program, visited the sites annually, and administered funding amongst its other duties. The evaluation of the program was performed by an outside group, the University of Colorado. Though the project failed to create lasting relationships with the participating organizations, it influenced nursing education, nursing home care, and federal guidelines, and also expanded the field and potential of geriatric nursing.
Outside Citation: Bronner, Ethan. “The Teaching Nursing Home Program.” In To Improve Health and Health Care Volume VII, edited by Stephen L. Issacs and James R. Knickman. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Anthology, 2004.
The Teaching Nursing Home Program collection was acquired by the University of Pennsylvania, Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing in 1995 from Joan E. Lynaugh. The materials, arranged in three series, explores a grant funded program that aimed to improve nursing home care through linking nursing home with schools of nursing as well as to teach on-hands geriatrics to nursing students and nursing home research.
Series 1 contains documents related to the administrative files of the Teaching Nursing Home Program generated during the program between 1981and 1987. This includes correspondence, budget justification, advisory board minutes as well as annual reports and conferences. In addition, this series also contains papers and speeches prepared by the administration, consultants and/or those universities participating in the program which sheds lights on the program’s successes and failures.
In series 2, the materials shed light on the activities of the individual universities accepted into the program. Organized by university, each subseries focuses on the progress made throughout the project. This includes annual progress reports, annual site visits, correspondence, and budget justifications. In addition, the original application and the reviewers’ score sheet and comments are contained here.
The third and final series focuses on the materials of the forty-two unfunded applications. This includes the original application, criteria score sheets and/or faculty summary data for individual universities. While many of the individual universities have all of those materials, some are incomplete.
Gift of Joan E. Lynaugh, 1995.
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Organization
Subject
- Publisher
- University of Pennsylvania: Barbara Bates Center for the Study of The History of Nursing
- Finding Aid Author
- Finding aid prepared by Jessica Clark
- Access Restrictions
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Access is open to all researchers unless otherwise noted to protect personal identifiable information.
- Use Restrictions
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Copyright restrictions may apply. Please contact the Center with requests for copying and for authorization to publish, quote or reproduce the material.
Collection Inventory
Documents in this section focus on the administrative records generated during this program’s existence. Broken into five subseries, documents include general and overview files such as original applications forms, consultants agreements, budget and voucher forms, acceptance and rejection correspondence, as well as advisory board minutes. Additionally, there are correspondence, annual conferences, annual reports, and papers and speeches prepared by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (who funded the program alongside the American Academy of Nursing), the University of Pennsylvania (who administered the program), consultants, and/or the individual universities involved in the program from 1982-1987. There are some photographs, slides, and a video within this series. In the subseries correspondence/materials, the folders titled "materials" may contain board minutes.
This series focuses on those universities who were granted money to participate in the Teaching Nursing Home Program. Each of the eleven universities is organized as a subseries, Western Reserve University, Catholic University of American, University of Cincinnati: College of Nursing and Health, Creighton University, Georgetown University, The Oregon Health Sciences University School of Nursing, Rush University of Nursing, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, State University of New York at Binghamton School of Nursing, University of Utah College of Nursing, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Papers within each subseries sheds light on the progress of the implemented program through annual reports, annual site visits and correspondence. In addition, this series contains their original applications, score sheet, and faculty data.
Restricted to protect Personal Identifiable Information (PII)
This section contains the documents of the unfunded universities whom applied for the Teaching Nursing Home Program grants. This includes the original application, score sheets, and/or faculty data compiled by those universities as well as the TNHP reviewers.