While in my junior year of nursing school during one of my clinicals, I had my first encounter with medical students. For those who think that all hospitals resemble the massive teaching experience depicted on ER, where everyone there is a student of something always learning some valuable lesson, here’s a quick reality check.

Not all hospitals are teaching hospitals with confused, young medical students milling about; although my experience with the medical students didn’t leave a very authoritative first impression when one of them asked me how to take a blood pressure.

It occurred to me that nursing students have the clinical advantage when it comes to on-the-job training before you’re actually on the job. As a nursing student, you start gaining practical patient care skills and hit the hospital floor running during sophomore year.  After that, clinicals and academics are fairly evenly balanced.  The downside is that as a student nurse you are typically responsible for one or two lives. After graduation and entry into the “real world” that number shoots upward of a half dozen warm bodies to care for.

This is a transition, to be honest, that is extremely difficult to prepare for. In fact, an article in the September 2007 issue of the American Journal of Nursing reported that after one year of work, 13% of new graduate (“new grad”) nurses had left the field of nursing and 37% were considering it.  Another study found that 27.1% of new grads bailed after year one.

It doesn’t have to be this way. In my opinion and the expert opinions of many others, the keys to bridging the gap between student nurse and new grad nurse, are training and mentorship. As a new grad you are assigned an experienced nurse to shadow for a period of time in your first job – usually a short period of time.

Many hospitals are starting to realize that a short period of time is not conducive to good patient care and also avoiding the costly nursing rehiring process that occurs when new grads keep quitting.  In response, they are turning shadowing time into training time and making the process longer and more well-defined.

It looks like hospitals are doing their part to make the transition from student nurse to new grad a more streamlined, safe and logical one.  What should new grads know to make the most of this training time?  Stay tuned for the conclusion of this blog.