Date of Conferral

10-26-2025

Degree

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

School

Nursing

Advisor

Mark Wells

Abstract

Across the health care continuum, organizations face persistent nursing shortages and the challenge of integrating novice nurses into clinical practice, often with limited skills and underdeveloped critical thinking abilities. Nurse residency programs have been integrated by many facilities to provide support for new novice nurses in transitioning from academia to the professional nursing role. This quantitative, quasi-experimental research project was conducted at a community-based hospital with an existing 8- to 10-week nurse residency program that had very limited stakeholder involvement. The purpose of the project was to create an educational training module for key stakeholders to strengthen awareness of why maintaining a nurse residency program is essential for novice nurses. Data were collected from 15 participants using the Casey-Fink Graduate Nurse Experience Survey pre- and posttest questionnaires. A point system measured knowledge gained, with pretest scores averaging M = 39.33 and posttest scores increasing to M = 44.53, reflecting a 13.2 percentage point improvement. Findings indicate that stakeholder education is essential for successful nurse residency programs. One recommendation to lessen time constraints of physical attendance in staff education sessions would be to build this learning module into the online HealthStream learning activity center for yearly competencies and training.

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