The University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC) AACN Nurse Residency ProgramTM (NRP) has helped program participants achieve a 4.4% turnover rate of first-year nurses–quite a feat, considering the national rate is 27.1%.
So far, 61 sites have incorporated the program, which equates to about 16,000 participating nurses since 2002. In 2009, 11 participating sites had a 100% retention rate.
It seems the key to the program is providing practice clinical training. According to the Carnegie Foundation, both nursing students and faculty think nurses are not prepared for their first job. If nurses don’t feel prepared, there’s a much greater chance they’ll quit the first year.
I’m curious to know how you, as nurses, felt about your first year of nursing, and how much it varies between nurses.
Did your hospital have this program? Did it help? How did you survive your first year? Do you remember feeling that your clinical training was adequate?
April 5th, 2010 at 9:28 am
I was the oldest student, at 53, in my class. I had gone back to school after a long and very interesting career in aviation. I was an airline transport pilot, flight engineer on turbojets, flight instructor,as well as being an aircraft and powerplant mechanic; nothing prepared me for the intensity and stress of nursing during my first job.
The best way to put it would be to take a brand new commercial pilot and say, “There is your Boeing 747, full of passengers, you have enough fuel to get to Bejing non stop, and, good Luck.”
“But”, you say,” I’ve never been a captain on a 747, and I have never landed in Bejing.” “don’t worry, you have a GPS to find the place and you have all the licenses that cover the laws: Oh, stay away from unfriendly countries, they’ll shoot you down; Good Luck.”
That is how I felt; lost, afraid of making a mistake and killing some patient, chagrined at the way I was being treated by other nurses. Soon, I left that unfriendly place.
So, I’d say, give new nurses more monitoring on the first job, for at the very least, One Year.
April 16th, 2010 at 8:06 am
I had the privilege of graduating from a Hospital Diploma program. Because of the amount of clinical training we received as part of our training, transitioning to my first job was not difficult. By the time I graduated I had been handling full assignments and we worked full 8 hour shifts as students from the start. It is not hard to understand why a nurse whose experience in training included caring for 2 patients for 4 to 5 hours, hits a brick wall when they start their first job and have responsibly for 5 to 8 patients for the entire shift.