Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / New nurses report feeling unprepared, incompetent, and highly stressed,
contributing to first-year turnover rates of 25% in some healthcare organizations.
Turnover, combined with a preparation-practice gap, has alerted advocacy organizations
and researchers to recommend the development of nurse residency programs.
Nurse residency programs are a post-graduate training period where new nurses
receive enhanced clinical education in the healthcare setting. While highly variable in
structure and attributes, programs usually include educational sessions, clinical
immersion, and role socialization opportunities. Evidence supports that new nurses
participating in nurse residency programs experience positive outcomes, including
increased confidence, competence, and decreased turnover rates. Despite this, only half
of the hospitals nationwide have implemented a program with most designed around a
single health system mission. This dissertation study aimed to identify the attributes of
nurse residency programs influencing the newly licensed registered nurse.
An integrative review of the literature and evolutionary concept analysis was
completed to examine the state of the science of nurse residency programs. Findings
revealed a lack of conceptual and theoretical design and variability among program
structures, creating a gap in the literature about the attributes of programs that are most
influencing new nurses.
Based on the literature's noted gaps, a qualitative description study was
conducted. Purposive sampling strategies were used to recruit nurses who recently completed varied program models across the United States. New nurses reported the
attributes of programs and described how those positively and negatively influenced the
transition to practice experience. The overarching themes revealed that new nurses need a
cadre of highly supportive individuals across the clinical and educational continuum who
espouse astute interpersonal and communication skills. New nurses desire engaging
activities with intra and interprofessional team members for clinical skill application,
knowledge advancement, and role socialization. New nurses need the structure of
meetings at times and in a sequence conducive to learning; and for preceptorship
experiences to be facilitated by trained preceptors, on a unit, and of a length that supports
confidence for autonomous practice. Future research will include the development and
testing of an evaluation tool based on the findings from this study.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:IUPUI/oai:scholarworks.iupui.edu:1805/24799 |
| Date | 12 1900 |
| Creators | Kiger, Christina Louise |
| Contributors | Otte, Julie L., DeMeester, Debbie, Draucker, Claire, Hoffmann-Longtin, Krista |
| Source Sets | Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
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