New Graduate RN Transition Programs

By Deloras Jones
Executive Director
California Institute for Nursing & Health Care

After so much hard work by so many to increase the number of graduating nurses, the San Francisco Bay Area isn’t offering many new jobs to our new nursing grads right now.  Have our efforts been too successful in overcoming educational undercapacity and reducing the nursing shortage the past few years? Not really. It’s just a case of bad timing.  The economy has created a tight job market and employers are filling the few slots they have with experienced nurses, who are working more and taking the jobs that new graduates expected to fill.  In addition, many health care employers no longer have budgets for new graduate transition programs. This leaves California's new nurses with fewer opportunities to gain experience and transition successfully into practice. 

At the California Institute for Nursing & Health Care (www.cinhc.org) we are publicizing that this temporary dip on the supply curve does not signal the end of an evolving shortage. Rather, as the newly insured begin to seek care and as the economy recovers, the demand for nurses will increase sharply. Older nurses will scale back hours and retire.  Previous estimates of RN demand will become reality: the California Employment Development Department estimates that 10,900 new nurses each year will be required to replace retiring nurses.

So, California nursing leaders, ever enterprising, creative and adaptive, responded to this mounting crisis. For example, CINHC has partnered with foundations, including the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Kaiser Permanente Fund for Health Education at the East Bay Community Foundation, and Kaiser Permanente Northern California Community Benefit, to secure funding to establish New Graduate RN Transition Programs. These programs, in partnership with hospitals and community-based health care agencies, provide nurses additional education, coaching and clinical experience to improve their competence and professional skills—smoothing the transition from education to employment. 

The programs incorporate clinical, didactic, simulation, and e-learning components.  They run approximately 24 hours each week over 12-18 weeks. Academic credit is given, along with an industry-recognized certificate of completion.

Four school-based programs have been established: at Samuel Merritt University, University of San Francisco, California State University-East Bay, and a collaboration of South Bay schools, including San Jose State University and San Jose/Evergreen Community College District through the Workforce Institute.  These are non-paid training experiences and participation does not guarantee employment.

So much progress has been made in expanding the Bay Area’s and California’s nursing education capacity. It would be a tragic error to roll back these programs due to a temporary, though painful hiring slump. We can ill afford to narrow the educational pipeline again and suffer the consequences—a potentially insurmountable gap in assuring an adequate nursing supply ever again.  The consequences would be increased costs,  diminished quality of bedside care, and millions of individuals with newly coveted insurance coverage, but limited access to quality care.  Through innovative programs, such as the New Graduate RN Transition Program, we believe we can keep these concerns from becoming a reality.