2003 Open Grants Competition Project Summaries
Lorna Guse
Integrating New Nursing Graduates into the Workplace: Strategies for Retention and Career Development.
Objectives:
The objectives are to examine and compare the workplace and professional integration of two groups of registered nurse graduates, one of whom experiences the usual work support strategies while the other also participates in a "transition facilitator" program.
Importance for Decision Makers:
If the transition facilitator program is found to be more effective in integrating new nursing graduates into the workplace and the profession compared with usual strategies, this program might become a strategy for widespread use among healthcare units, facilities, and regions in Canada. Knowledge transfer and uptake will be enabled through the development of a transition facilitator program manual.
Description:
The new strategy of transition facilitator will be compared with the usual support provided to registered nurse graduates in their first nursing position in the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority. It is anticipated that, compared with nursing graduates who experience the usual workforce support strategies, the nursing graduates who participate in the transition facilitator program will experience increased satisfaction and decreased stress in the workplace; feel "fully-functioning" earlier; be more likely to stay in their initial workplace unit or facility; and be more active in short-term continuing education and professional development activities and long-term career planning.
Approach:
New registered nurse graduates who agree to participate in this project will be randomized into one of two groups. For both groups, baseline socio-demographic, education, and workplace data will be collected, followed by measures of workplace satisfaction, stress and retention, feeling fully-functioning, and education and professional development activities at three, nine, and 15 months. At 15 months, nursing graduates in the transition facilitator group, managers, and the transition facilitators will meet in separate focus groups to discuss the effectiveness of the transition facilitator program in assisting with a positive integration into the workplace and the profession.
Project Identifier:
RC1-0994-07
Funding Provided by:
- Canadian Health Services Research Foundation
- Manitoba Health
- Nursing Research Fund, University of Manitoba
- Winnipeg Regional Health Authority
- College of Registered Nurses of Manitoba
Principal Investigator:
Lorna Guse, RN, PhD
University of Manitoba, Faculty of Nursing
Helen Glass Centre for Nursing
Winnipeg, Manitoba R3T 2N2
Telephone: (204) 474-6220
Fax: (204) 474-7683
E-mail: lorna_guse@umanitoba.ca
