|
EDITOR'S
NOTE |
|
What do you think? PREVIOUS Changing
Direction In
Appreciation A
Healthy 2000 Robo-care Spread
the Word An
Army of Advocates What Price Youth? Scientific advances offer a glimpse at longevity Take
Time |
One of the most important aspects of building a nursing workforce and strengthening nursing professionally is ensuring that new nurses are brought into the profession in a supportive and nurturing manner. To be successful, this requires proper educational resources, qualified and available preceptors, and a receptive, challenging practice environment. These investments will help guard against the early career turnover that so frequently occurs when students are faced with the reality of the workplace. Because nursing is a knowledge profession, educational support is as essential to quality as computers are to the finance and business functions of a hospital. It is particularly important to new graduates as they begin their careers. Regardless of the availability of experienced nurses, there should never be a time when our arms are not open to hiring as many graduates as we can reasonably absorb and adequately support. If you think back a few years, many graduates were not receiving much attention from employers. In fact, a graduate had a difficult time landing an interview without previous clinical experience, and rarely would be considered for a specialty area. Think of how much better it would be today if we had made room to hire new graduates in 1995. Instead, now we are looking at ways to cultivate a workforce and increase the educational capacity to respond to the increasing need for nurses. Making sure our organizations are receptive and supportive to graduates seems like a good place to start. For the graduate who wants nothing more than to work in a given specialty, requiring a year of medical/surgical experience as a prerequisite is outdated and unrealistic. For new graduates, Iconsider their enthusiasm for a given area of nursing practice as the most important indicator of success. We should look on such an early focus as a strength that can be cultivated, rather than a burden of extensive orientation and training. I advocate putting graduates into any clinical environment they choose, as long as an experienced and nurturing preceptor is available and is given the necessary time to support and help the new graduate learn the ropes. Given the complexity of our clinical environment and the practical limitations of nursing educational experiences, is it time to consider a required post-licensure "internship" for new graduates? A yearlong internship would ensure that recent graduates acquire clinical experience within a structure of support with the guidance and supervision of expert nurses. We need to ensure that every nurse who enters the profession today has no regrets about their choice. We desperately need them. Carol Bradley,
MSN, RN |
