Due to the global nursing shortage, new graduate nurses are being hired into high acuity units, such as the emergency department (ED) more frequently (All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global Health, 2016; American Association of Colleges of Nursing [AACN], 2019; Glynn, & Silva, 2013; World Health Organization, 2013). New graduate nurses working in EDs experience intense environmental pressures including overcrowding, unlimited client numbers, increasing violence, boarding, and complex disease presentations (Gorman, 2018; Hesse, 2017). These pressures often cause new graduate nurses to leave the ED and even the nursing profession after one to two years of practice, costing healthcare facilities over $82,000 per new graduate nurse (Hesse, 2017; Kramer, Brewer, & Maguire, 2013; Sandler, 2018). This abstract presents the benefits of a successful academic-practice partnership for staffing EDs and other high acuity clinical units.
Based upon the guiding principles created by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing-American Organization of Nurse Executives (AACN-AONE) joint taskforce, the Auburn University at Montgomery School of Nursing developed a mutually beneficial academic-practice partnership with Baptist Health, a local health system (AACN, 2012). A shared goal of the partnership includes the establishment of a pipeline through which baccalaureate prepared, new graduate nurses are recruited into the practice partner’s EDs. Although the major function of baccalaureate education is to create nurse generalists, a secondary objective is to prepare nurses to meet community workforce needs (AACN, 2008). To prepare the select cohort of pre-licensure students for positions in the ED setting, an educational initiative was developed in which emergency nursing content not included in the traditional program’s curriculum was presented.
Methods:
A component of the partnership includes the creation of an emergency nursing course offered to students in the final semester of the pre-licensure baccalaureate program. A financial gift of $75,000 from the health system to the nursing program will allow the course to be offered to students free of charge for five years. The course’s content is based upon the Emergency Nursing Core Curriculum by the Emergency Nurses Association in order to provide students with a current, evidence-based approach to learning the principles of emergency nursing care (Sweet, 2018). A clinical component, consisting of 45 clinical practice hours is also included in the course.
Results:
The inaugural course was offered in Spring 2018. Nineteen students applied for the course and eight were selected. Upon graduation, 50% of the cohort accepted positions in EDs and 25% in intensive care units within the health system. After one year in the registered nurse role, 100% maintained employment in these high acuity clinical areas within the health system.
Conclusion:
Specialty clinical immersion courses provide pre-licensure students the opportunity to learn about a specific clinical area before accepting employment. Providing this clinical immersion experience during the final semester of the baccalaureate nursing program allowed students to begin a residency-like training program to increase assimilation to the emergency nurse role while also providing a cost savings to the health system (Glynn & Silva, 2013; Morphet, Kent, Plummer, & Considine, 2016).