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While physician residencies have been the norm seemingly forever, nursing residencies are still fairly new. If you’re interested in one, you need to know basic info about what you’d experience.

Brittni McGill, MSN, RN, CCRN, Chief Nursing Officer, Norman Regional Health System in Norman, Oklahoma says that nurse residencies are new, having been around in their current form for about the last decade. However, in the last five years, they’ve become quite common in acute care nursing.

“The Nurse Residency Programs are designed to establish a smooth transition from student life to professional practice. These programs seek to establish clinical competency, provide emotional support through the transition, and facilitate recruitment and retention of strong nurse beginners who are committed to the nursing profession and the hospital,” says McGill. “The residency program is meant to build on the foundation provided by nursing schools and unit orientation through reflection, case reviews, and critical thinking that strengthens what it means to be a professional nurse.”

At Norman Regional Health System, McGill says nurse residents receive both formal as well as informal learning opportunities. “[They] focus on our institutional policies, procedures, and standards of care while introducing them to key persons and structures needed to execute the institutional and departmental routines,” she explains. “Our Nurse Residency Program includes an evidence-based practice project and presentation of that projection. The purpose is to ensure the residents are fully aware of the process that results in continuous learning, developing, and enhancing patient care based on evidence. The learning never stops.”

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Nursing residencies last anywhere from six months to one year, but most are a year long. They should encompass unit-specific orientation, hospital orientation, be paired with a preceptor and a mentor, include a peer support component, and should focus on developing the skills that nurses need to grow as professionals.

“Nursing residencies can be administered differently across hospital settings. The NRHS Nurse Residency Program includes all new graduate nurses hired into the acute care hospital setting regardless of specialty. This allows relationship building across units and service lines enhancing teamwork and collaboration,” says McGill.

If you’re looking into a nurse residency program, McGill suggests that you do your research. Be sure to ask recruiters about nurse residency programs. If you’re looking for nursing positions, search for “New Graduate RN” or “Nurse Resident” listings. And during job interviews, be sure to ask questions about a health care system’s nurse residency programs.

The greatest rewards of nurse residencies, says McGill, are “the peer support the nurse residents receive during the program and the lifelong connections formed with the nurses from different departments.  The ability to learn about the hospital as a system and not just the unit they work on,” she says. “This helps build the interdisciplinary component that health care is striving to achieve. The nurse resident can also get a perspective of the care a patient receives on other units and how each area impacts the patient’s care overall.”

Michele Wojciechowski
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