When reach exceeds touch: Student experiences in a cross‐sector community‐based academic‐practice partnership.

Objective: A partnership between three nursing programs, multiple high‐needs public school districts and a local asthma coalition was developed as a way to build shared capacity aimed at improving health outcomes for children with asthma. This article explores student perceptions of their clinical experiences teaching asthma self‐management within a regional cross‐sector, community‐based, multi‐site academic‐practice partnership. Design: Nursing faculty from three Long Island, New York‐based nursing programs within the partnership jointly created a qualitative focus group methodology to more fully understand the phenomena of interest. A set of open‐ended interview questions guided the sessions. Sample: Through purposive sampling, 42 undergraduate nursing students participated in 60‐min focus group sessions. Measurement: Focus group data were transcribed. Content analysis, coding, and theme development was carried out collaboratively. The unit of analysis was the individual participant responses informed by group interaction. A researcher diary was maintained. Results: One overarching theme and three sub‐themes emerged from the data, reflecting student understandings in the areas of positioning, professional/personal identity, and social awareness. Ongoing analysis revealed patterns across the data sets linking student learning and the goals, milieu and workings of the partnership. Conclusions: Findings suggest that the context of a thriving community‐based academic‐practice partnership, established to improve population health outcomes, offered unique clinical learning opportunities for students through exposure to the values, ideas, and innovation of the partnership itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]