Educational objective #2: Reflective practice when used during the orientation process increases the level of competency a nurse is able to successfully achieve.

Purpose: The use of reflective practice during the orientation process of graduate nurses increases both their competency and retention. Reflective practice and regularly scheduled meetings with their educators, preceptors, and mentors allows the new nurses to openly discuss practice issues or concerns they have encountered on their unit in a non-threatening environment and to learn from those past issues or concerns. Increasing confidence among new graduates positively affects their rate of job satisfaction. Job satisfaction is directly correlated to the retention rate.

 Description of how the session will provide relevant and current knowledge: Relevant and current knowledge will be provided through research-based information by using a case scenario. A complete literature review of all relevant information pertaining to the use of reflective practice in the provided case scenario will be available for public viewing. The use of mind mapping when using reflective practice will also be defined and exemplified.

Summary of presentation: The healthcare community is working hard to incorporate into their strategic plans methods to increase their recruitment rates along with their retention rates for all healthcare professions. Graduate Nurses are looking for the hospital that will embrace them as individuals as well as healthcare professionals. Benefits and compensation are important to the new nurses but equally important to them is the type and duration of orientation they will receive.

            Introducing nursing leaders to the use of reflective practice during the orientation process will directly impact job satisfaction for the graduate nurse. Job satisfaction coupled with a heighten competency level gives the nurse a sense of belonging to the organization which results in a higher retention rate.

Implications for practice: Nursing educators are challenged with making sure graduate nurses are properly trained for the jobs they were hired to do. The challenge comes from multiple sources. Some of those include changes within nursing school programs, hospital cutbacks which directly cause a lack of funding for more nurse educators, and programs which are designed to put new nurses out in the workforce quicker due to the nursing shortage.

            “Graduate nurses often accept positions in acute medical-surgical units on graduation, even though they may have had limited exposure and lack appropriate skills. Fast tracking nursing programs also challenge hospital educators. Although these programs assist in meeting the growing demand for professional nurses, they also decrease new nurse’s exposure to hospital clinical practice. Nurse educators must assist in the nurse’s transition to acute care settings by expanding classroom teaching in orientations and extending clinical orientations on the units to include basic physical system review, nursing skills training, and patient assessment principles” ( McCullough, 2003, p. 74).

Reference

McCoullough, A., (2003). Where do nurse educators fit? Nursing Management, October 2003, p. 74.