2024 Nursing Annual Report

Innovations in Nuring

Improving New-Hire Outcomes by Implementing Phased Onboarding

The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) team developed a three-phased onboarding approach to onboarding new nurses. • Start with the lowest acuity patients and basic skill mastery and progress to the highest acuity and skill complexity. • Each phase builds on the previous phase, allowing the orientee to gradually assume increased responsibilities and skills. • The orientee must prove competency of all components within each phase before progressing to the next, with the goal to ensure they are better prepared when encountering more complex patient scenarios and better able to capitalize on the experience.

Thirty- two nurses were surveyed on their confidence levels utilizing a Likert Scale of 1-10 with 1 signifying “not confident”, and a score of 10 signifying “extremely confident”. Upon completion of Phase 1, 81% of nurses surveyed reported scores of 7 or higher. After Phase 2, 78% reported scores of 7 or higher. Of note, those who self reported lower confidence levels cited not having phase appropriate assignments as the cause. New-hire nurses are not expected to take Phase 3 patients directly after orientation, so their confidence levels were not discussed. Survey data on preceptor feedback is ongoing.