Nurse Residency and Interprofessional Collaboration: Inspiring Novice Nurses in Professional Development

Nurse Residency Programs promote nursing professional development through interprofessional collaboration shadowing experiences. Interprofessional collaboration requires a deliberate commitment by each profession to create an experience that focuses on improving patient care and quality outcomes.  Utilizing current evidence based research related to interprofessional collaboration and its effect on the quality of nursing care, the Nurse Residency Program at this 531 bed tertiary care Magnet facility partners with nine departments to provide 88 nurse residents with eight hours of collaboration/shadowing experiences. Our partners in practice include Pain Management Practitioners, Respiratory Services, Rehabilitation Services, Diabetes Education Center, Adult and Pediatric Palliative Care, Tray Line and Room Service, House Supervisors, Pharmacy, and Wound Care. A total of 519 collaboration experiences are provided with each individual experience evaluated by the nurse resident. Each experience is evaluated on overall experience and relevance to future nursing practice.  The collaboration/shadowing experiences provide an opportunity for the nurse resident to observe how departments work together to impact quality patient care and increase patient satisfaction. The overall goal of the experience is to create an increased awareness among new nurses regarding how all disciplines and departments work together to improve patient care. Residents take valuable knowledge with them from each experience so that they can also grow in their own professional development.