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.

Transition-to-Practice Programs: Can They Improve Patient Safety and Quality of Care?

An article in Nurse.com looks at several pioneering transition-to-practice programs that are helping new RNs get the skills and experience they need to more easily make the transition from nursing student to practicing RN.

According to the National Council of State Board of Nursing (NCSBN), more than 40 percent of new graduate nurses report making medication errors and 50 percent do not believe they would recognize life-threatening complications that would require intervention. Moreover, the NCSBN reported that average turnover rates for nurses in their first year are 35 to 60 percent.

To address these issues, leading educators, hospitals and health systems have developed nurse residency and other transition programs that help nurses develop and practice the critical thinking and clinical judgement skills needed, as well as the clinical experience they need to feel more confident and less stressed when they take on their first nursing job.

Results of these early efforts are promising, including lower turnover rates. NCSBN is currently conducting a study into the effect of a transition-to-practice program model on patient safety and and quality outcomes.

The IOM report, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Care, calls for strengthening nursing education, and many of the Action Coalitions that are part of Campaign for Action to implement the IOM report recommendations are working to develop or expand nurse residency programs.