In this comprehensive resource, nursing staff development expert Jim Hansen, MSN, RN-BC, provides instruction and tools to plan, justify, and structure a nurse residency program that develops and retains new nurses through their first year

The Future of Nursing explores how nurses' roles, responsibilities, and education should change significantly to meet the increased demand for care that will be created by health care reform and to advance improvements in America's increasingly complex health system. At more than 3 million in number, nurses make up the single largest segment of the health care work force. They also spend the greatest amount of time in delivering patient care as a profession. Nurses therefore have valuable insights and unique abilities to contribute as partners with other health care professionals in improving the quality and safety of care as envisioned in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) enacted this year. Nurses should be fully engaged with other health professionals and assume leadership roles in redesigning care in the United States. To ensure its members are well-prepared, the profession should institute residency training for nurses, increase the percentage of nurses who attain a bachelor's degree to 80 percent by 2020, and double the number who pursue doctorates. Furthermore, regulatory and institutional obstacles-including limits on nurses' scope of practice-should be removed so that the health system can reap the full benefit of nurses' training, skills, and knowledge in patient care. In this book, the Institute of Medicine makes recommendations for an action-oriented blueprint for the future of nursing.

New graduate nurses make up 10% of an organization's nursing staff (Hopkins & Bromley, 2016). New graduates are faced with the challenge of transitioning to practice from the classroom setting. Nurse residency programs are designed to provide new graduate nurses with a resource in their first year of practice. An integrative review of literature was conducted to analyze components of nurse residency programs associated with their respective outcomes. The implementation of a nurse residency program provides the new graduate nurse with support, education, and clinical skills required of a registered nurse. Proposed analysis of this literature review will be presented. -- Abstract

Nurses make up the largest segment of the health care profession, with 3 million registered nurses in the United States. Nurses work in a wide variety of settings, including hospitals, public health centers, schools, and homes, and provide a continuum of services, including direct patient care, health promotion, patient education, and coordination of care. They serve in leadership roles, are researchers, and work to improve health care policy. As the health care system undergoes transformation due in part to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the nursing profession is making a wide-reaching impact by providing and affecting quality, patient-centered, accessible, and affordable care. In 2010, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released the report The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health, which made a series of recommendations pertaining to roles for nurses in the new health care landscape. This current report assesses progress made by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation/AARP Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action and others in implementing the recommendations from the 2010 report and identifies areas that should be emphasized over the next 5 years to make further progress toward these goals.

"New graduate nurse residency programs' primary function is to provide new graduates with clinical experience and bridge the gap between student and competent registered nurse (Walsh, 2018). While the focus of these programs is on teaching new graduates, a gap in practice has been identified when it comes to the education of the nurses that are training these new graduates. The purpose of this program evaluation was to increase preceptor feelings of preparedness for the precepting role, as well as increase preceptor education attendance rates to at least 50% of eligible nurses. This was a program evaluation with a pre-/post-test design that evaluated the impact of preceptor education in 10 registered nurses. Participants submitted surveys to evaluate their feelings of support and preparedness for their educator roles before and after the educational presentation. There was a statistically significant increase in post-education scores (M=11.2, SD=2.15) when compared to pre-education scores (M=6.6, SD=2.8); t(9) = -5.81, p=0.00025597. Furthermore, 100% of respondents had a higher total score on the post-survey than the pre-survey with a mean difference of +4.6 points +/-2.5 (SD), indicating that they felt more supported and prepared to act as preceptors after the education. By offering a preceptor education curriculum that is easily accessible, organizations will see increased attendance rates and therefore higher feelings of support and preparedness from nurse preceptors. These preceptors will then be able to teach and empower new RNs on their journey to practice, offering a smoother and safer transition to professional independence, and decreasing burnout rates and turnover costs to the healthcare organization (Trepanier et al., 2012)"--Abstract.

New graduate nurses encounter "transition shock" when they enter the workplace, especially in acute care settings such as hospitals. New graduate nurses have a difficult time transitioning into the work environment because they are unprepared by their academic training for the realities they will face and they often don't have the proper support in place to guide them through the transition. This leads to a high attrition rate of up to 30% within the first 18 months of employment which costs hospitals and health care facilities. High nurse turnover of new graduate nurses who aren't prepared for the complexities of clinical practice affect the quality of care provided. Patient outcomes are negatively affected because it often leaves hospitals dealing with a shortage of experienced nurses, which they compensate for by having high patient to nurse ratios. New graduate nurses must develop the necessary critical thinking skills to handle higher acuity patients and difficult situations, develop confidence in their clinical skills, and adapt to peer relationships. One solution to the "transition shock" that new graduate nurses face is the implementation of nurse residency programs. Nurse residency programs are shown to help new graduates have a better transition into the workplace and increase nurse retention. This paper discusses the problem of new graduate nurse turnover, the benefits of nurse residency programs, and the numerous research studies which have been done showing the success of nurse residency programs on new nurse graduate retention and job satisfaction. It also discusses how to implement a nurse residency program and monitor and evaluate its success.