Calling all recent New York State board certified nurses, Episcopal Health Hospital is rolling out its inaugural nursing residency program.
This initiative is being offered through the New York City Nursing Project in partnership with Vizient — a healthcare company, is accredited by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing and funded by New York City’s Talent and Workforce Development Division.
The first cohort started on Dec. 5 and there are 25 nurses currently enrolled. Every three months a new group will be initiated for a total of four a year.
The 12-month nursing residency programs pairs new nursing hires with mentors to provide training and enhance their skills in a smaller setting. They also review policies and procedures to ensure that the new nurses are well prepared for their duties.
The residency program is aimed for registered nurses with less than a year’s experience and serves as a place for learning and support.
“At some point throughout the residency, the nurses will start to explore the relevance of evidence based practice into their every day work,” said Dr. Keisha-Ann Wisdom, SVP of patient services & chief nursing officer. “It’s a three-prong approach to the resident.”
The members of this residency will have monthly meetings with higher-ups for the nurses to express how they are currently feeling.
One of the main goals of the program is retention — there is a lot of turnover regarding new nurses in the post-Covid era.
“As an organization, you really need to take care of this population of employees in a very supportive way,” Wisdom said. “It focuses on attracting the nurses and retaining them once they come in. This program being a year long, will provide us to get to that six-month mark and then take us to the one year mark by creating a trusting environment and supporting our nurses.”
In order to qualify for this program, you need — a New York state nursing license, degree from an accredited institution and low experience levels.
A typical schedule for a resident will start off with a classroom setting to learn the expectation for when they enter the work force. After that, they are partnered with a nurse to guide them for 12 weeks and become immersed into the reality of nursing by working on their own.
“We want to improve our patient outcomes because it’s going to benefit a lot of people including our incumbent staff their experience should go up,” said Dr. Denise Potts. “Literature states that you’ll get a bigger outcome when you have stationary staff rather than temporary. This group will impact a lot of people within the hospital.”
All seminars will take place on-site at the hospital, along with the meetings.
“Having access to this resource helps us measure how we compare to other institutions, our nurses will provide information and surveys at different intervals of the residency,” Wisdom added. “That’s really important for us as leader here at EHS to see how do we compare? How do we learn from others and help others learn? It’s creating that learning environment and making sure that we are not looking at things as an anomaly but as a normal way of transitioning nurses. ”