The Effect of Nursing Residency Program on the Clinical Competency of Novice Nurses Working in the ICU & NICU from the Viewpoint of Head Nurses

The ultimate goal of nursing is to ensure the recovery and health of patients through providing high quality care. However, novice nurses who are working in clinical settings need help and are not aware of the system's expectations. In this study, we investigated the effect of a nursing residency program on the clinical competence of novice nurses working in the intensive care units of Yazd governmental hospitals from the viewpoint of head nurses.

In this interventional study, the clinical competence of 31 novice nurses was studied. The participants were randomly assigned into two groups of experimental and control. The nursing residency program consisted of 20 hours of training, support, and counseling in eight months for the experimental group. Data gathering tool in this study was a clinical competence questionnaire for novice nurses. The head nurses filled out the questionnaires before, immediately after, and three months after the training course. Data were then analyzed by SPSS (version 22) and running independent t-test, and repeated analysis of variance.

According to the viewpoint of the head nurses, The clinical competence scores of novice nurses working in the ICUs & NICU,were (150.15 ± 23.1), (174.35 ± 2.75), and (168.3 ± 32.45) for the experimental group and (134.75 ± 24.75), (116.05 ± 29.7), and (146.3 ± 22) for the control group before, immediately after, and three months after the intervention, respectively. The difference between mean scores of two groups was not significant before the intervention and three months later, although of the mean scores of two groups differed significantly before the intervention and immediately after the intervention. With respect to clinical competence scores, the different between two groups was significant in three stages.

The results on the efficacy of nursing residency program in improving the clinical competence of novice nurses working in the ICUs & NICU were positive from the viewpoint of heads nurses. Accordingly, we propose execution of programs related to all issues over which nurses need to upgrade their clinical competencies and for the novice nurses of other parts of the hospital.