Effects of Nurse Residency Programs on Nurse Confidence and Competency

Download or read book Effects of Nurse Residency Programs on Nurse Confidence and Competency written by Janet L. Gerken and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nurse Residency Programs (NRPs) were introduced to address the gap that exists between entry-level nurses' skill proficiency, confidence, critical thinking ability, comfort, and to improve the graduate nurses' ability to offer safe and competent care. However, there is only a small amount of literature to support that NPRs help entry-level nurses in developing confidence and competence. This Direct Practice Improvement Project was developed to assess the impact of NRPs on the confidence and competency of entry-level nurses. Benner's novice to expert theory and Duchscher's organizational theory of learning and experiential learning, served as the theoretical framework for this project. The quantitative project used a pretest/posttest design to determine whether or not the participation in an NRP was directly related to improved confidence in practice and improved competence, as measured by self-reported medication errors. The project was based on a case study of the Vizient/ American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN). Nurse Residency Program. It employed the convenience sampling method, and all the 26 nurse residents in the program were selected to participate in the project (N=26). The Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test demonstrated a significant increase in the number of new nurse graduates with improved confidence, after the participation in the residency program (p= 0.05). The project was inconclusive concerning improvement in competence, as measured by medication errors, due to the non-existence of errors at the point of entry. Practical implications for practice include the incorporation of nurse residency program into the undergraduate curricula, and the adoption programs that are at least three months long.