As a novice nurse during my first shift at Intermountain, my scrubs were clean, my shoes comfortable and I was eager to contribute to the healing efforts happening around me. However, I was quickly overwhelmed by my busy surroundings and unsure of how to best coordinate with those around me. While I had received an excellent education and foundation in nursing, I lacked the practical experience that the tenured nurses around me had. Intermountain Healthcare, along with our local academic institution partners, is an advocate for nurse residency programs to assist new graduate nurses in gaining this valuable academia-to-practice experience.

Like a physician residency program, a nurse residency program provides learning and experience on how to prioritize the needs of several patients, delegate appropriately and communicate with one another concisely and accurately. One of the most beneficial aspects of the nurse residency program is being assigned a clinical coach to not only assist with decisions required at the bedside but to support and mentor the new graduate over time. The program consists of 36 hours of classroom learning and 144 hours of clinical experience which includes completing 16 hours of team-based scenarios in a simulation lab.

Intermountain currently has nurse residency programs in each of our large geographical regions, the Southwest Region, our Urban South Region, our Urban Central Region, Primary Children’s Hospital and our Urban North Region. New graduates hired to work in one of our rural hospitals have easy access to these regional programs.

Intermountain Healthcare supports programs like nurse residencies that complement formal education and support a more experienced care team. But we’ll keep the clean scrubs and comfortable shoes too.