NPMC program provides 24/7 support for new nurses
National Park Medical Center now offers the TruMont Nurse Residency Program that will provide new nurses a primarily virtual 24/7 support system as they transition from schooling to practice.
“It’s my deep-held belief that one of the most important things we do in terms of nursing workforce is to ensure new graduate nurses coming into the facility have a very firm foundation on which to start,” said Lisa Wallace, chief nursing officer at NPMC.
The transition-to-practice time new nurses experience will often shape their outlook and practice for the rest of their career, she said.
“We would want that to be very clinical sound, very safe, a confidence builder enabling the nurse to be the most successful they can as they start independent practice,” she said. “There’s a lot that goes on in that orientation phase, and we’d like to be a big part of helping launch a new nurse’s career so they’re confident and confident for a good many years to come.”
The program will offer an online community and a formalized education module that will be required for nurses to complete in their residency.
“It really broadens their options quite a bit to be able to pose questions, get support, to get feedback or just to sort of say to somebody else who is in the same development stage that they are, ‘Hey, how are you handling this?’” Wallace said. “The faculty for TruMont is very highly distinguished … and they hold a dedicated time new nurses can also have uninter
rupted time with them and get attention on things that are important to them.”
The program currently has 12 nurses enrolled, and Wallace said 20 can fit comfortably with the number of preceptors trained to be part of the program. The preceptors are another “very important” piece of the program, she said.
“For nursing, a preceptor is someone who has at least a couple of years of experience who is clinically very sound, who is a good role model, who is a good resource, for that new nurse,” she said. “So they’re typically paired up for at least a 12-week time frame.”
The preparation of the preceptors for the new nurses are of “equal importance,” Wallace said.
“The selection, education, training of preceptors need to be done very prescriptively as well, and there is actually a section of TruMont that provides that,” she said. “So since January, we’ve been training preceptors here at National Park to serve in that role so that they’re ready when the graduates are ready at the end of May, first of June, to receive them as a well-prepared preceptor.”
Every nurse deserves a good preceptor, and a good orientation, Wallace said.
“There’s been talk about residency programs for new nurses for years; that’s not a new concept,” she said. “What’s new about this for National Park is that the delivery of the program is online. We still have certainly the preceptors here on-site, but a good bit of the didactic instruction and cohort’s support comes in an online format.”
In a society familiar with going to an app for information, Wallace said this format is going to be a benefit to most.
“TruMont will function very much like that for our new graduates. It can be accessed on their cellphones, a tablet or a regular desktop computer or whatever they really prefer, and it’s available to them 24/7,” she said. “Whereas … sort of a more traditional residency program might have weekly or a couple of times a month classes for new graduates and their residency.”