The Florida Blue Center for Health Care Quality, housed in the College of Nursing and College of Public Health and Health Professions at the University of Florida, received grant funding from the Florida Blue Foundation to support an 18-month planning study to determine the feasibility, potential market, potential partners, competition and best practices for a Nurse Fellowship Program in Florida.
The $250,000 grant will fund a feasibility study that will include focus groups, surveys, cost and workforce analysis, and site visits to determine the employment market for recent graduates and graduating nurses with an emphasis on understanding success factors for employment.
The goal of a Nurse Fellowship Program in Florida would be to enable nursing students and recent graduates to gain necessary work experience prior to applying for nursing positions.
The study, which will focus on recent B.S.N. graduates, will also analyze the existing nursing fellowship market, both in Florida and in the southeast, to understand the barriers and challenges of the development, implementation and maintenance of a fellowship.
Co-leaders on the feasibility study are Director of the Florida Blue Center for Health Care Quality Jeannie Cimiotti, Ph.D., R.N., FAAN, and Co-Director of the Florida Blue Center for Health Care Quality Arch Mainous III, Ph.D.
Cimiotti is an associate professor and the Dorothy M. Smith Endowed Chair in the College of Nursing, and Mainous is the Florida Blue Endowed Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Services, Management and Policy in the College of Public Health and Health Professions.
Yin Li, Ph.D. from the College of Nursing joins Cimiotti and Mainous on the team of experts assessing the possibility of creating a Nursing Fellowship Program.
At the conclusion of the 18-month study, the team of experts will provide the Florida Blue Foundation a summary of their findings, along with evidence-based recommendations for a potential Nurse Fellowship Program.
About the Florida Blue Center for Health Care Quality
The Florida Blue Center for Health Care Quality brings together experts from a variety of disciplines at the University of Florida, including health services administration, nursing, health policy, medicine, pharmacy, public health and sociology, to design and evaluate improved approaches to health care access and delivery. It is housed within the College of Nursing and the College of Public Health and Health Professions.
The Florida Blue Center is supported by a gift from Florida Blue with the ultimate goal of improving health and health care for the citizens of Florida. The center’s faculty, staff and students are accountable for the quality and integrity of all work conducted in the center.
About Florida Blue Foundation
Florida Blue Foundation enables healthy communities by making grants, building coalitions and rewarding best practices. More than three million people in Florida have received direct health services as a result of grants made to nonprofit organizations since its founding in 2001. Florida Blue Foundation is a trade name of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida Foundation, Inc., an Independent Licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.