“Thinking outside the box”: social innovations emerging from academic nursing-community partnerships

Abstract

Nurses comprise the largest group of healthcare workers in the world. Increasingly, nurses in higher education institutions are collaborating with not-for-profit and community-based organisations to devise programs, projects and interventions that benefit both their students’ education and individuals in the community. This chapter describes an integrative review of these academic nursing-community partnerships, focusing on the nurses’ roles, the students’ role and the lessons learned from the partnership strategies that blend the expertise of the community members and nurses in higher education.