The Case for Nurse Residency Programs

The Institute of Medicine Report, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Care, includes several recommendations for strengthening nursing education. Nurse residency programs are one avenue for doing that, while also boosting nurse staffing at hospitals and helping those hospitals retain new nurses.

An article in the Anchorage Daily News looks at one nursing residency program at Alaska Regional Hospital and how it's preparing nursing school graduates and increasing nurse staffing. In addition to classroom instruction, Alaska Regional's program includes nurse-to-nurse mentoring, daily debriefing and frequent testing and evaluation.

The Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action includes several Action Coalitions working to develop or expand nurse residency programs. Most recently, the Rhode Island Action Coalition launched a statewide clinical nurse residency and mentoring program with a State Implementation Program grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The Rhode Island program will place nursing school graduates in a range of settings from nursing homes to community clinics, as well as hospitals.