Today, recent nursing graduates work in ICUs and must be trained to provide care for such patients.
Clinical nurse specialists and nurse educators in critical care search for more efficient and effective ways to orient recent nursing graduates to critical care. Graduate nurses are often overwhelmed with the multiple roles and tasks required in caring for critical care patients. The preceptors at Catholic Medical Center, Manchester, New Hampshire, identified a major concern with graduate nurses: too much time was required for the new nurses to become proficient at completing basic critical care tasks such as clearing volumetric pumps, performing sterile dressing changes, suctioning endotracheal tubes, and emptying collection containers. These frustrations in skill attainment led our preceptor committee and educator to seek a more efficient approach to skill development during orientation of new graduate nurses. After a review of existing literature, we implemented a plan to improve the orientation of...