School of Nursing: Dedicated Education Unit

The University of Portland School of Nursing and our clinical partners are pleased to share our innovative model of clinical nursing education with colleagues in nursing and health care. The DEU is our best practice for clinical learning and the creative way we have found to deal with critical staff nurse and nursing educator shortages. Contained within this website is theoretical and practical information on the DEU model to help you explore the potential of the DEU model with your clinical partners and to help you operationalize this model in your own settings.      

The DEU is a client unit that is developed into an optimal teaching/learning environment through the collaborative efforts of nurses, management and faculty. It is designed to provide students with a positive clinical learning setting that maximizes the achievement of student learning outcomes by using proven teaching/learning strategies and by capitalizing on the expertise of both clinicians and faculty. The partnership between faculty and nursing staff on the unit provides a synergistic environment to best educate the next generation of nurses, an opportunity for nursing staff to stay fresh and motivated in their roles as mentors and role models, and a way for faculty to remain grounded in current clinical reality.

In collaboration with the Providence Portland Medical Center, Providence St. Vincent Medical Center and the Portland VA Medical Center, the University of Portland began its first DEU in 2003. A partnership of nurse executives, staff nurses and faculty transformed patient care units into environments of support for nursing students and staff nurses while continuing the critical work of providing quality care to acutely ill adults. Currently, the University of Portland collaborates with its clinical partners to operate six DEU’s on medical/surgical units and one psychiatric unit in our three partner Magnet medical centers in Portland, Oregon.   

We invite you to browse the various links on this website. We have provided various materials on the DEU for your reference and we welcome you to use them as templates when developing your own DEU documents and beginning your own DEUs.

For more information on Dedicated Education Units, look for our article, Dedicated education unit: An innovative clinical partner education model, in the January 2007 issue of Nursing Outlook.

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