The scope of work includes developing bed-side nurses as mentors and preceptors for new nursing graduates and existing nurses to encourage retention within the field. This initiative is designed to reduce the number of nurses who exit the profession for a variety of issues. It will equip practicing nurses with the necessary skills to recognize issues that would cause their peers to exit the field and to provide them with the professional resources necessary to take steps to retain these highly trained/skilled workers.

Expected Primary/Global Outcomes

• Create a segment of the Academy to train bed-side nurses to serve as preceptors/mentors for the purpose of nurturing new graduate nurses to the rigors of acute care medicine and physical demands of the profession, including long working hours in hospital settings.
• Develop training modules to support the preceptor/mentor program.
• Provide training for 280 nurses to serve as preceptors during the grant funding period.
• Develop and begin using tool to measure the nurse retention rates (the long term outcome is to reduce the number of nurses leaving the hospital setting by 10 percent).

Progress

The project coordinator (KCMHC) has developed:

• Preceptor training materials that contains formal curriculum
• Common evaluation form

A project team comprised of hospital chief nursing officers and educators from nursing schools and hospitals has been formed and met regularly to review, recruit hospital volunteers and provide technical assistance.

In addition to the preceptor training materials, a mentoring toolkit is being developed and pilot tested.