RN Residency Increases First-Year RN Retention Rates

Simply brilliant! I love hearing about people who see a challenge and create innovative solutions to meet and overcome those challenges. Versant, a non-profit organization formed to help increase the retention rates of newly graduated RNs is made up of exactly those type of people.

It is estimated that first-year retention rates for new graduate nurses is between 40% and 65%. In other words, as many as 6 out of 10 new nursing grads leave nursing practice within one year of graduation. Those are alarmingly figures especially in our current nursing shortage!

Rather than blame those turnover rates on the nursing grads, their generational quirks, or their immaturity, the people at Versant assumed that the problem lay with how RNs were being transitioned into clinical practice. In other words, the problem was a management problem. Therefore, management could solve the problem.

The solution they created was a twenty-week RN residency program that helps RNs bridge the gap between academic preparation and the clinical demands of acute care. The program began at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles in 1999 and its results are impressive to say the least!

Research on the program’s results demonstrate that first-year retention rates for new graduate nurses who participated in the RN residency program increased to 90%. In other words, they lost only 1 out of 10 nurses within the first year after graduation.

If you’ve never heard of Versant, their residency program or the research results of their program published in the July/August 2004 edition of JONA, you can visit their website at versant.org.