Full Speed Ahead
Accelerated training program for new nurses gives rookies
a confident start to their chosen career
By Melissa Gaskill
November 15, 2004
A few weeks after Marysol Mendez, RN, started working in the emergency department at St. David’s Medical Center in Austin, another nurse called her in on a crash. She talked Mendez through the event, asking questions at every step, until the patient was stable and sent to the ICU.
“She was leading me in the right direction, allowing me to be analytical, so I could figure it out,” says Mendez, who graduated from the Austin Community College nursing school in May.
This isn’t a typical approach with new graduates, but Mendez is one of 11 nurses participating in a joint program of St. David’s Healthcare Partnership and ACC funded by $2 million from the U.S. Department of Labor, as part of the agency’s President’s High Growth Job Training Initiative.
The local money is part of a $4 million grant for specialty nurse training received through a partnership between Nashville, Tenn.-based Hospital Corporation of America (part-owner of St. David’s Healthcare Partnership) and two community colleges: ACC and Broward Community College in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Similar to a medical residency for physicians, the nurse fellowship program provides hands-on training that accelerates nurse training in specialty areas such as intensive care, emergency, and surgical services.
Program administrators say the one-year program will give nurses experience equivalent to a nurse with three or more years on the job.
“We were looking for a way to replace not just the number of nurses retiring or leaving, but also their experience,” says Bonnie Clipper Salzberg, RN, MA, MBA, chief nursing officer at St. David’s Medical Center. “We are speeding up the learning curve from novice to expert.”
St. David’s and ACC are working together to hire program staff, and deliver the educational activities to a total of 70 nurses, screened by an applicant advisory board and program administrators.
The nurses will complete fellowships over the course of a two-year period, including didactic training, online courses administered by ACC, and field trips to other facilities, including Tulane University Medical Center in New Orleans and Medical City Dallas Hospital.
Successful applicants have done well academically and are committed to providing bedside patient care, Salzberg says. “We have a process to select our best and brightest to precept the fellows, and we pair them up with a mentor as well. The preceptor’s focus is clinical, while the mentor is there to make sure we are meeting their needs as a new nurse.”
The program is also making use of technology, Salzberg says.
For example, fellows and preceptors are issued a PDA loaded with reference material, and a simulated patient allows fellows to experience situations they might wait years to encounter in real patients.
“I think it is really important to have experienced, knowledgeable, intuitive, highly skilled nurses available,” Salzberg says. “Research shows that if you reach nurses in the first three years of their career, you are more successful in changing practice patterns. We are going for new nurses so we can affect their practice patterns and develop those. Their experience will then benefit others. Fellows make a commitment to work for us for two years, and after they complete their fellowship, they’ll be preceptors for the next group.” At the end of the second year, fellows will sit for certification exams.
“I want to get to where when someone asks me a question, I will be as confident answering as my preceptor, who has worked for nine years,” Mendez says.
“The quality of nursing comes from application. You have to have done it to know it.”