Interprofessional Collaboration and the New Graduate Nurse: Are We Expecting Too Much?

Pfaff, Kathryn A.

Tuesday, 1 November 2011: 10:20 AM

Kathryn A. Pfaff, RN, MSc
Faculty of Nursing, University of Windsor, Windsor, ON, Canada

Learning Objective 1: The learner will be able to state the barriers to new graduate nurse engagement in interprofessional collaboration.

Learning Objective 2: The learner will be able to identify strategies to support new graduate nurse engagement in IPC through transforming nursing education and practice environments.

Interprofessional collaboration (IPC) is currently touted as one mechanism for enhancing the delivery of Canadian healthcare and the overall health of its population. Within both acute care and primary care sectors, IPC is associated with improved patient outcomes. These include reductions in morbidity and mortality, decreased hospital length of stay, and enhanced recruitment and retention of nurses. As such, Canadian governmental and professional bodies strongly endorse IPC initiatives. Moreover, nursing regulatory bodies mandate that all registered nurses engage in IPC, beginning upon entry-to-practice. Nevertheless, a plethora of evidence indicates that new graduate transition to independent nursing practice is characterized by stress, anxiety and reality shock. Indeed, collaboration with other health care providers is a significant stressor. This begs the question, “Are we expecting too much of the new graduate nurse?”

The nursing literature does not provide an answer to this question. Conceptual analyses of IPC suggest that it is characterized by: sharing, partnership, expertise, interdependency, power and process; however, it is not clear whether these attributes reflect the experiences of the transitioning novice nurse. To explore this theoretical relationship, the contemporary new graduate RN literature (2000 – 2009) was abstracted verbatim and critically mapped to the aforementioned concepts. A thematic conceptual matrix was constructed to provide a rigorous analysis, both within and across the concepts. The presentation summarizes the findings of the analysis, and proposes universal strategies to enhance new graduate engagement in IPC. Transforming nursing education and practice environments can assist entry-level nurses to achieve IPC expectations and improve health care outcomes.

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