ICUs, emergency rooms and other units in
Abrazo Community Health Network and
Banner Health hospitals since TTP began.
Dr. Melanie D. Logue, CONHCP’s
new dean, said the program is necessary
because patients are sicker and health
care delivery is more complex than ever.
Nurses must be prepared to hit the ground
running and function as safe, effective
team members, she said.
“Entering into the field of nursing is
more stressful now than ever before, and
nurses require a high degree of confidence
to be successful,” said Logue, who herself
completed a nurse residency at Phoenix
Children’s Hospital as a GCU student in
the early 1990s. “GCU understands the
real-world need and is responsive to this
need by offering the first program of its
kind in the state.”
Head is a stellar example of how the
program works: She started her final-
semester clinical rotation in the ICU in
February, graduated from GCU in April
and became employed by Abrazo as a nurse
extern in May.
“I knew I wanted to be somewhere
fast-paced, where I was constantly
challenged,” Head said. “The ICU is
that place, and I can’t imagine doing
anything else. GCU gave me that opportunity.”
Nurses and the future
With chronic disease in the U.S. at epidemic proportions and
expectations for the quality and accessibility of health insurance raised
by the Affordable Care Act, multiple sources have predicted a critical
shortage of nurses. As Baby Boomers age (and the generation’s nurses
retire) and the complexity of health care grows, the Bureau of Labor
forecasts 1.05 million job openings for registered nurses by 2022.
At the same time, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2011 called for
80 percent of the U.S. nursing workforce to have bachelor’s degrees or
better by 2020 and for nurse residency programs to be in place. Such
programs, the IOM said, reduce turnover and costs, stabilize staff and
support newly licensed nurses in the development of their clinical
decision-making and autonomy.
Taking the report to heart, Dr. Dawna Cato, a GCU alumna, adjunct
faculty member and architect of the TTP residency, got together with
other state nurse leaders to form the Arizona Action Coalition. Cato
focused her 2013 Ph.D. dissertation on the relationship between
nurse residency and evidence-based practice, an increasingly popular
interdisciplinary approach. It integrates the best available evidence on a
treatment’s efficacy, clinical expertise to identify a patient’s health and
appropriate diagnosis, and the patient’s preferences and values.
“If we empower our new grads, they can transform the profession,”
said Cato, market director of professional development for Abrazo,
which recently was awarded $661,000 in state funds to establish a
workforce pipeline with GCU on specialty fields in nursing.
Tyna Williams, chief clinical value officer and regional chief nurse
executive for Abrazo and its parent company, Dallas-based Tenet Health
Care, said the nurse residency/nurse fellowship program will transform
192 new graduate nurses from novice to expert. The goal is to certify
more nurses in areas such as intensive care, emergency department,
operating room and telemetry.
Research shows that as many as 50 percent of newly graduated nurses
don’t feel prepared to assume responsibility for patient care, Williams
said. TTP gives participating hospitals a close look at a prospective
nurse’s skills and personality before making formal employment offers.
“Nurses drive patient care,” said Cato, who has a BSN and a master’s
in nursing education from GCU. “We’ve been very good at providing
research on best practices of patient care. For example, we know what
we need to do to prevent a catheter-associated urinary tract infection or
pressure sores or falls. We know we can have better patient outcomes if
we support the evidence.
“But education and practice haven’t collaborated as well as they
should to put the patient and family at the center of the team.”
Cato said “the reality shock of being a new nurse,” feeling unprepared
and unsupported, almost caused her to quit the profession years ago.
From classroom to patient room
Head has had the opposite experience at Abrazo Maryvale, where she
started out working a 12-hour shift each week.
“I felt very welcomed and had a sense of belonging,” she said. “I
learned that if there’s something you don’t know, you’re not going to
be judged. They help you — ‘This is how we do it.’ You learn from
that. From day one I thought, ‘I can see
myself staying here for the long term.’”
Unlike other clinical opportunities,
in which teams of students regularly
rotate from one supervisor, one medical
department and one facility to the next,
TTP placed Head in the same location
with the same preceptor for 10 weeks.
That enabled her to build relationships
and hone her skills.
Head, who grew up in a large family
in El Paso, Texas, in which Spanish
was the primary language, loves
connecting with the Maryvale ICU’s
Diana Puente Head (left), a 2015 GCU alumna, continues her training as a registered nurse at
AbrazoMaryvale Campus with clinical coordinator AnnaWard. Head completed GCU’s Transition to
Professional Nursing Practice program last spring.
photos by darryl webb
Dr. Dawna Cato
photo courtesy of abrazo
community health network
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