In today’s highly competitive healthcare environment, new nurses are a precious resource. Despite the upfront investment and costs to recruit novice nurses, healthcare organizations are eager to hire new graduates to fill vacancies. Hiring new nurses is not the only challenge nurse leaders face - keeping them is equally challenging. Consider that first-year turnover for novice registered nurses (RNs) currently outpaces all other tenure categories and accounts for as much as 83% of a hospital’s total turnover.
To combat turnover and develop a steady flow of new nursing graduates who remain in their jobs longer term, nurse leaders should take a proactive approach to centrally managing the onboarding and retention of novice nurses. Well-designed new nurse orientation programs have been proven to increase competence and confidence, which impacts satisfaction and improves retention rates among new nurses. Learn how nurse leaders can streamline novice nurse onboarding to maximize efficiencies and build a safety net that supports nurse growth and retention. Strategies to manage the transition to practice include:
- Analyze your current approach to onboarding: Assess the strengths and weaknesses of your current hiring practices to establish a foundation and reimagine a new practice going forward.
- Apply a quality methodology to streamline onboarding: Learn effective ways to streamline the hiring and onboarding process to focus on activities that create value for the new nurse and the institution.
- Centralize the onboarding process: Utilize a centralized process for new graduate recruitment that allows nurse managers to onboard new hires and maintain focus on the day-to-day operations of their units.
- Leverage historical data to establish a baseline for hiring: Use trends and data-led insights on attrition rates and cost per hire to support funding your proposal and designing the orientation program.
