In light of today’s nurse shortage, ensuring that novice nurses have a strong start is not only important for their personal success but critical to patient outcomes. That’s why Broward Health, which has offered a comprehensive 12-month nurse residency program since 2016, is poised to launch a re-envisioned program to include gamification and interactive activities that will deliver effective learning with a touch of fun.
“Our team is committed to finding innovative strategies to address the challenges nurse residents face,” said Sylvia Sloane Jones, APRN, who manages Broward Health’s nurse residency program. “With our new program, we’re responding to changing needs as well as changes we’ve observed in the style of learning preferred by today’s nurse residents.”
Gaming is one solution identified to capture and hold people’s attention, which some experts report may be as little as seven minutes. An example of gamification is the redesign of 10 traditional class lecture discussions into clinical scenario escape rooms with rhymed clues, puzzles, locked boxes and invisible ink pen messages. These escape rooms make team building, skill acquisition, and learning policy, procedures, and standards more appealing and engaging.
“Engagement is key,” explained JeBony Parris, R.N., clinical education specialist. “As nursing educators, we often see nurses who are proficient in a topic become bored and unengaged when it is presented in a traditional classroom lecture. Nurses who are less proficient can get lost. As they fall behind, they too become unengaged.”
While teaching methods are changing, the need for continued learning in an organized, safe, and engaging manner remains the same and Broward Health’s nurse residency program team recognizes that it’s critical to continue to meet the requirements and regulations for standardized programs. This includes providing committed nursing leadership support, core educational classes with clinical debriefing, professional development seminars with clinical reflections, mentoring experiences and data collection for monitoring confidence, assessment and evaluation, clinical practice, interprofessional communication, professional role focus and residency support specialist to provide on the unit support during individualized preceptor orientation.
“We’re using a lot of nontraditional methodologies to bring the curriculum to life, but it is the same quality curriculum,” said Jones. “Our goal with this update is to make learning as fun, interactive and memorable as possible through hands-on, scenario-based teaching that will not only drive home the curriculum but enable nurse residents to build important soft skills like active listening, working with others and accountability.”
“Transitioning into the nursing profession is a challenge,” Jones added. “New nurses are expected to jump into difficult roles and expand their ability to manage complex issues quickly. We believe our new approach will be a game changer.”
Broward Health plans to officially launch this updated version of its program in early 2024.
The updated program will continue providing novice nurses with the necessary knowledge base, skill set and structured support to help them transition from student to competent and confident registered nurse. With new cohorts starting monthly, the program currently welcomes 250 graduates annually.
For more information, including program requirements, the application process and launch dates, interested parties can visit www.BrowardHealth.org/Pages/Nurse-Residency-Program or email sljones@browardhealth.org.
