UNITYPOINT HEALTH – DES MOINES Nurse Residency Program

History

UnityPoint Health Des Moines began their Nurse Residency Program in 2010. This started as a pilot program to improve the transition of new nurses into the field, along with retention within the organization. Over the past 13 years, the program has expanded across ten clinical specialty areas and has impacted over 500 new nurses. The clinical specialty areas include the Emergency Department, Adult Critical Care, Surgical Services, Medical-Surgical, Telemetry, Behavioral Health, Acute Rehab, Pediatrics, NICU, and Maternity. Over the last year, the Nurse Residency Program has made significant changes to programming, structure, and the hiring process in response to key stakeholders including future, current, and past residents, leaders, and educators. These changes will continue to occur over the next year to align with the system’s strategic plan and to meet the needs of the stakeholders. In 2019 and 2022, the UnityPoint Heath Des Moines Nurse Residency Program received accreditation with distinction from the ANCC’s Practice Transitions Accreditation Program (PTAP). This high designation has only been awarded to two Nurse Residency Programs in Iowa: both are UnityPoint Health programs.

Programming

The programming consists of reviewing and applying global nursing concepts to the resident’s patient population for the first 6 months of the program. Some topics covered include delegation, professionalism, critical thinking, prioritization, conflict resolution and communication, individualizing patient care, healthcare finances, and evidenced-based practice and quality improvement initiatives to improve patient care. Programming also includes personal wellbeing, resiliency training, and self-care strategies. During the second six months, they work on practice initiative projects to improve patient outcomes on their floor. The Nurse Residency Leadership Team evaluates the program content and evaluations to ensure topics are relevant and delivery methods are conducive to the residents’ learning. There is also clinical specialty area specific education that occurs to cover skills and information related to their specific patient population. This content is taught by the Clinical Education Specialist for that population. The residents share their practice initiative projects at graduation.

Wins

The Nurse Residency Program has many accomplishments over the past decade. Most recently, the accomplishments have been receiving accreditation with distinction despite the challenges of COVID, recruiting nurses from across the United States, and dissemination of practice initiative projects via poster presentation at conferences. Some of the conferences included the UnityPoint Regional Evidence-Based Practice Symposium, Iowa Organization for Nursing Leadership (IONL), and the National Evidence-Based Practice Conference. The Nurse Residency Leadership Team will be presenting two posters at the ANCC Transition to Practice Symposium in May. In addition, over the past year, there has been a significant increase in applicants and nurse residents starting in the program. In 2022, there was a 30% increase in the number of nurse residents compared to 2021. The program is on trajectory to exceed this increase in 2023. In 2022, we started a new recognition program for our preceptors. The nurse residents nominate their preceptor and explain how their preceptor positively impacted their orientation. A committee reviews the nominations and chooses a winner. The winner is presented with the award and their nomination is read by the nurse resident. We had 3 winners who precepted residents in the 2022 cohorts. The Nurse Residency Leadership Team looks forward to more wins in the future and being able to continue to support the nurse residents in their transition to practice.