There's No Place Like Home: Preventing Nurse Turnover with a Nursing Internship Program

Purpose:
The purpose of this presentation is to discuss why new graduate nurses are leaving the nursing profession and to explain how developing a nursing internship program decreases new graduate nurse turnover.

Significance:
New nurse turnover has reached alarming rates.New graduate nurse turnover is costly to organizations,negatively impacts the quality of nursing care delivered to patients,and is weakening the nursing workforce.New graduate nurses feel bullied by experienced nurses and this creates an unsafe culture.

Strategy and Implementation:
In order to attract,develop,retain,and engage new graduate nurses we have redesigned a nursing internship program to be consistent with the 2011 IOM report: Advancing heatlh / leading change.This internship program operates under the cornerstone principles of: creating a welcoming environment, offering support to new graduate nurses, matching preceptors and new graduate nurses to assure nurse bullying is eliminated, offers a smooth & seamless transition to assure new graduate nurses are growing & developing their professional nursing practice in a supportive environment. The internship program uses EBP to guide the content during didactic. The program is 12 weeks long & contains 120 hours of didactic, 12 hours of electronic medical record education, 24 hours of simulation and focuses on creating a culture of safety.Each week has its own focus & topics include communication,safety,core indicators,inter-professional team, priority setting, rapid response.

Evaluation:
The internship progam has a 96% retention rate in 2011. Moreover, ancedotal evidence suggests there is improved satisfaction, improved communication, expressed strong emotional support from interns and solid relationships are forming. Reports of bullying from new graduate nurses are decreasing.

Implications for Practice:
Preventing Turnover is critical to the nursing profession.The implications of turnover is significant on many levels: financial, satisfaction, safety of nurses, retention, quality of care.The looming nursing shortage makes turnover a critical issue now.New graduate nurses need to be supported.