Interinstitutional collaboration for nursing excellence: Part 1, Creating the partnership.

A partnership between two unrelated public institutions was formed to enhance the quality of clinical learning for students and staff, promote exemplary care to patients, and foster expansion of nursing research. The critical nucleus of the partnership is the unit-based clinical nurse specialist who performs the multiple functions of professional nursing: practice, education, and research. This two-part series describes the collaboration effort. Part 1 focuses on the organizational structure created for the partnership, and part 2 reports the findings of a 15-week pilot study conducted to test the model.