The transition from nursing student to professional nurse is filled with demanding changes. Early Career Nurses often face numerous challenges, such as caring for patients with complex illnesses and co-morbidities, a lack of professional opportunities, performance anxiety, communication difficulties, and a culture of blame and complaints. These transitional hurdles can lead to job dissatisfaction and a high turnover rate among newly graduated nurses. This webinar aims to shed light on the significance of a good transition for newly graduated nurses, which might have the potential to positively impact long-term nurse retention, aligning with the Strategic Directions for Nursing, promoting universal health coverage, and working towards the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals related to quality health care and workforce retention.
Objective
The session targets early career nurses, policymakers, healthcare leaders, health professionals, mentors,and representatives of stakeholders. These individuals play crucial roles in policy development,healthcare decision-making, and directly implementing initiatives to strengthen health systems and the healthcare workforce.
The session will highlight the importance of a satisfactory transition for earlycareer nurses as they enter the workforce, focusing on:
- analyze the main challenges faced by newly graduated nurses, including transitional hurdles, lack of support, labour issues, limited opportunities, and poor working conditions;
- share experiences and strategies to mitigate transition problems of newly graduated nurses, such as mentorship programs;
- promote global collaboration and knowledge exchange among professionals; and
- identify improvement opportunities and propose recommendations to support newly graduated nurses globally.
Expectations and outcomes
The webinar focuses on early career nurses' transition and aims to raise awareness about their challenges. It will identify improvement opportunities from different countries and propose recommendations to enhance support, retention, and employment opportunities. Additionally, the webinar will explore strategies for nurse retention, offering practical solutions and policy implications for better support and professional growth for early career nurses.
Session overview
The adaptation to the professional world by nursing professionals is difficult and full of challenges that newly graduated nurses from all over the world must face. This complex process for these early career nurses can significantly impact their development in the workforce, even leading them to leave the profession. Given the global shortage of nurses, we must seek solutions that promote the retention of nursing professionals.
During this session, three pillars will be mainly addressed.
- Axis I: Early Career Nurses Transition Challenges
- Difficulties and challenges during workplace adaptation.
- Career prospects for Newly Graduate Nurses: working conditions, job security, and opportunities.
- Axis II: Retention Strategies for Early Career Nurses
- Importance of transition programs as policies.
- Role of mentorship and peer support in supporting newly graduated nurses
- Axis III: Impact of Effective Early Career Nurses Transition
- Improved healthcare service quality through satisfactory transition.
- Nurse empowerment strategies to strengthen teams and increase confidence.
- Policy implications and practical solutions for nurse retention.
By involving both Early Career Nurses and Health Leaders, the intention is to reach common points that can impact nurse retention, as presented in the Strategic Directions for Nursing.
