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Mentoring
program helps Westerly
Hospital overcome
statewide trend
With
fewer and fewer men and women choosing nursing as a career, hospitals
are forced to pay bonuses and
get creative in their attempts to attract young nurses and retain
experienced nurses.
In Rhode Island,
the nursing shortage was at 8 percent in 2004 and was expected to
increase to 25 percent by 2010 and 55 percent by 2020 according to the
Statewide Health Assessment Planning and Evaluation (SHAPE) study
sponsored by Blue Cross & Blue Shield of RI.
Hospitals
have been responding to this shortage in a number of ways with varying
degrees of success. The inability to attract and retain nurses forces hospitals to use agency nurses, and
traveling nurses who fill vacancies around the country for a period of
time by contract. These options are expensive propositions.
In
2004, The Westerly Hospital had a nurse vacancy rate of 17 percent and
both options were being employed to augment full time and part time
staff nurses. In one year alone, the cost of these contracted nurses
was $2.5 million.
A
number of recruiting and retention efforts were instituted, and in 2005
a Graduate Nurse Internship Program was launched as a way to create a
pool of applicants trained at the Hospital. This 12-week program
includes classroom work and bedside care under the guidance of a
nursing program faculty member.
Christine
Gentry of Mystic is one of this year’s interns, having graduated
in spring from the Three
Rivers Community
College nursing program. Christine said
the internship allows her to test the theories of classroom instruction
against the realities of daily patient care.
“It
makes a big difference to have a go-to person,” Christine said,
glancing at Melissa Hagenburg, a nine-year
veteran of nursing and Christine’s mentor.
“Melissa
comes with a wealth of experience and I’m trying to pick her
brain,” Christine said as they stood in the busy nurses’
station of the Medical Care Unit at the Hospital.
Melissa
knows firsthand the value of the time she is spending with Christine.
“I
started at another hospital and I had two weeks of training and that
was it,” Melissa said. “The combination of classroom work
and time spent on the unit working with patients is a good combination.
I wish they had it when I was starting.”
The
program includes eight weeks of instruction in classroom work and
bedside care provided by temporary faculty preceptors from the
state’s various nursing programs. The final four weeks are spent
in direct patient care with a staff mentor.
The
Westerly Hospital Auxiliary agreed to pay for the faculty
members’ salaries and materials. The Hospital’s two nurse
educators, Alison Desillier and Boni Lawless, administer the program.
This
sort of training is not new, of course. Decades ago the mentoring
scenario was simply business as usual for hospital nurses. The nursing
shortage strained staffing patterns such that nurses could no longer
take the time to teach while caring for more and more patients.
There
is no guarantee that nurses enrolled in the Hospital’s Graduate
Nurse Internship Program will accept positions here, but many have. The
hospital now has fewer than five agency nurses.
As
she enters the final stages of her internship, Christine is clearly
appreciative of the offering. A fellow classmate of hers landed a job
after graduation and was immediately immersed into what many consider
one of the highest stress producing occupations – hospital
nursing.
“She’s
having a very different experience than I am,” Christine said.
“She feels very alone and very left out. In September, I’ll
be a full staff nurse, but I won’t feel alone.”
David V. Tranchida is the Manager of Public Relations and
Marketing at The Westerly
Hospital.
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