Loyola Nursing, Northwestern honored for partnership
The Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing and Northwestern Medicine have received national recognition for a partnership that places nursing students at Northwestern for most of their clinical experiences.
Oct. 27, 2026
An "innovative and sustained" partnership between the Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing and Northwestern Medicine is being recognized for its unique approach to a common challenge: helping nursing schools secure the clinical placements their students need to graduate.
The initiative is also creating a new pipeline of potential nurses for Northwestern.
The two Chicago organizations received the American Association of Colleges of Nursing's (AACN) 2026 Exemplary Academic-Practice Partnership Award on Oct. 27. The award recognizes institutions involved in “highly productive and model” partnerships with demonstrable positive outcomes, according to the AACN.
The centerpiece of the Loyola Nursing-Northwestern partnership is the Enhanced Clinical Experience (ECE) program, which places a cohort of Loyola Nursing students at Northwestern for nearly all of their undergraduate clinical work.
"This was a program that made sense for both Loyola and Northwestern, and once we decided to sit down and talk about it, we knew we could make it happen and ensure it was a success," said Lee Schmidt, Loyola Nursing executive associate dean for academic affairs.
The two institutions are a natural fit for a partnership due to their similar missions, he said: Loyola Nursing prioritizes cura personalis, or care for the whole person, while Northwestern emphasizes a patients-first approach.
Kristin Ramsey, Northwestern's chief nursing officer and senior vice president for quality, said the success of the collaboration is reflected in its outcomes: Nurses who have completed the program and launch their careers at Northwestern have a 90 percent one-year retention rate.
"Through our strong partnership with Loyola, we have developed a highly curated experience that prepares students for professional practice while creating meaningful opportunities to join our nursing team," she said.
Clinicals are real-world, supervised learning experiences in hospitals and other health care facilities that typically start in the third year of Bachelor of Science in Nursing programs. Students usually rotate clinical locations and work in a different site, for a different health care organization, every semester.
ECE gives both Northwestern and Loyola Nursing students consistency. And, in a highly competitive environment where multiple nursing schools are seeking clinical placements, it means Loyola Nursing has to spend less time securing high-quality placements every semester.
A pathway to a career
The partnership provides a potential runway for Loyola Nursing students to launch their careers at Northwestern.
Since 2021, more than 270 Loyola Nursing students have completed their clinicals at Northwestern Medicine Academic Medical Center (NM-AMC). Of those, approximately half accepted a registered nurse position at Northwestern after graduation.
Loyola Nursing students, who apply and interview for ECE, gave the program high marks. In a survey of cohort participants, 87 percent strongly agreed that returning to the same health system every semester helped them understand how departments and care teams work together. The same percentage said their clinical confidence grew significantly with each return to Northwestern during the program.
“Training consistently at Northwestern Memorial Hospital helped shape my sense of professional identity by allowing me the time and space to develop my confidence on my own time,” one student wrote. “Being able to not worry about how to get to clinical or relearning new systems gave me the ability to focus on myself, my skills, my confidence, and my learning in a way that constantly switching locations wouldn’t have allowed.”
Dean Lorna Finnegan said the partnership is intended to be long-term and is already expanding, with Northwestern serving as a clinical site for doctoral-level projects. Plans are also underway for Northwestern nurses to have expanded roles as Loyola Nursing clinical instructors.
“This award highlights how Loyola Nursing and Northwestern Medicine are advancing a national priority: bringing nursing schools and health systems together to prepare the nursing workforce,” she said. “Our partnership reflects the shared responsibility emphasized in the AACN/AONL Academic-Practice Partnership Playbook, a national guide for strengthening collaboration between nursing education and practice.”