The start of a pilot nurse residency program

4^th International Conference on Nursing & Healthcare

October 05-07, 2015 San Francisco, USA

Cynthia Smith Peters

The University of West Florida, Florida

Posters-Accepted Abstracts: J Nurs Care

Abstract :

New nurses often identify feelings of anxiety, shock and role stress during role transition from student to professional nurse. Short orientation programs do little to ease the transition. Transitional problems cause 35 to 60 percent of RNs to leave their first employer within one year after hire. Research has demonstrated significantly fewer errors; improved patient outcomes; and a reduction of first year turnover (from 35-61% to 6-13%) among participants in nurse residency programs. A quality improvement project was completed which reports the outcomes of a piloted 1 year nurse residency program aimed to ease the transition of graduate nurses (GNs) to registered nurses (RNs). The pilot program was initiated through a partnership with a university and an acute care hospital located in the southeastern United States. The pilot program was designed on the framework of Benner�s theory of developmental stages of a nurse from novice to expert and through recommendations of the Institute of Medicine. A pre-post intervention design was administered using the Casey-Fink Graduate Nurse Experience Survey. The tool assessed feelings of comfort and confidence during the student, graduate and novice nurse phases.

Biography :

Email: csmithpeters@uwf.edu