Help for new nurses?

Something that was made endlessly clear to us in nursing school was that upon completion we would still "know nothing".  That is, the real training would not happen until we were hired, and it would be at the hospital's expense.  We could expect several months of limited productivity before we would be able to function fully as autonomous professionals.

This lengthy apprenticeship has a number of adverse effects.  One is that for hospitals, hiring new nurses is an expensive decision;  they must pay a nurse a full wage though he is not yet fully productive, and they must also pay his mentors for the time they spend mentoring instead of nursing.  There is also some risk;  there is no guarantee that, once trained, the new nurse might not take his newly-acquired skill-set to benefit another employer.  Another adverse effect is the initial low job satisfaction for the new nurse.  The learning period incurs all these costs and more.

A study we would like to see asks whether assistance from time and workflow management tools such as NurseMind can abbreviate apprenticeship time for new nurses and reduce those adverse effects.  We claim that it can but have no proof. We do have lots of ideas for studies that could answer these questions.

Another population that could perhaps benefit are nurses who join nursing units that are new to them.  Tools such as NurseMind could support them as they become expert on the way nursing is done in new units.  Though these transitions take less time than those of new nurses, the issues and costs are similar and so, presumably, are the potential benefits.

If you are interested in these issues and would consider working with us to study them, please get in touch!