Nurse Residency Programs: Adaptation of the concept to public health nursing

BACKGROUND: Nurse residency programs for new graduate nurses are linked to increased patient satisfaction and nurse competencies, and to fostering professional growth. These programs are predominantly implemented in hospital settings, especially university-affiliated teaching hospitals, and thus are centered on acute and critical care nursing. Their counterparts are nearly absent in public health and for public health nurses (PHNs). PROBLEM: Little is known about how to adapt nurse residency programs to the public health environment or the organizations in which PHNs work. The purpose of this review is to identify common elements of residency programs, and identify ways those elements might be achieved in local health departments. METHODS: A literature review was conducted using the databases EBSCO, Web of Science, Nursing via OVID, CINAHL, Google Scholar and PubMed. Key words identifying research published in English from 1998-2012 were: Nurse, Nursing, residency programs. Limits included peer-reviewed sources from scholarly journals. All hits were reviewed, yielding 334 pertinent abstracts. After reviewing the abstracts, a total of 32 full text articles were retained for review. FINDINGS: Nurse residency programs have 5 common core curriculum topics relevant to PHN, including: evidence-based practice, time management, communication, mentorship and professionalism. Safety, quality and standards of care are also common but would need to be adapted to a PHN module. IMPLICATIONS: Given that local health departments' budget for recruitment and orientation is much smaller than that of hospitals, providing nurse residency programs for PHNs may be challenging. Nonetheless, potentially successful residency programs can be built on existing curriculum.