A New Look at Nursing

Several authors have written about the problem of nursing shortages, and they have attempted to identify causative factors and strategies to address the problem. Some strategies like increasing diversity especially men in nursing, improving the workplace environment, and confronting workplace violence are addressed in this book. However, one area that has been overlooked and therefore neglected is the lack of retention of new nurses in the profession, especially in bedside nursing. This trend is not only occurring in the United States, but also internationally. The problem ultimately affects the care that patients receive. As in other professions, as older personnel retire, the anticipation is that younger workers would be trained to continue their work. So too, as older nurses retire, younger nurses are needed to continue the process of patient care. In response to nursing shortages, developed countries have often resorted to recruiting nurses from developing countries, leaving the developing countries depleted of healthcare personnel. Having entered the nursing profession after completing high school, in this book, Marcia Edwards shares her own experiences. She is aware of the challenges in the profession, but she remembers how veteran nurses mentored her and assisted her as a new nurse to develop in her career, and how their ongoing support enabled her to succeed and stay in the profession. With that same zeal, she is an advocate for new nurses. Her love for nursing despite its challenges, was the impetus to explore ways to help new nurses. The desire to help new nurses inspired her in 2013 to select and conduct a research study about new nurses’ experiences in the first year of clinical practice. In her study, she wanted to hear from new nurses directly, what were their experiences in the first year of clinical practice and ascertain why they chose to leave nursing or their current positions. She recognized that new nurses do not perform their work in a vacuum. Therefore, she also gained input from the nursing leaders, in terms of their expectations for the new nurses and the role they believed new nurses played in their organization. Her study gave new nurses the opportunity to voice their concerns and the study findings demonstrated the disconnect between nursing education in the classroom, nursing leaders, and their expectations for new nurses in clinical practice. She has taken an additional step not only to highlight the new nurses’ shared experiences, but to develop a model for nursing mentorship based on their responses.