Ensuring New Graduate Professional Socialization

By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN

Most health systems will employ many new graduate nurses this spring/summer. An increasing number of these new graduates plan to travel once they gain some RN experience. While historically, travel agencies and other health systems might not have employed nurses with so little experience – the recent turmoil with the nursing workforce has changed all that. Trends like this have a butterfly effect which includes the following:

• Many new nurses are breaking contracts with health systems to take jobs where they will make more money without appreciating the investment made in their transition.
• Achieving a return on investment for residency programs and intense specialty training becomes increasingly difficult.
• As new nurses leave, they are replaced by new graduates leading to an endless cycle of inexperienced nurses serving as preceptors and charge nurses when they are not ready to assume these roles.
• The new nurse is never fully socialized into a team and the profession.

While these trends have a significant immediate impact, the last two have profound implications for the professional socialization of the future workforce. Canadian researcher Judy Boychuck Duchsher has spent her career building on the work of Marlene Kramers’s reality shock research. Duchsher describes three phases of nurse transition.

Doing Phase – the new nurse is on a steep learning curve and is overwhelmed with meeting practice expectations. The stress and anxiety level of the nurse is very high.

Being Phase – the nurse rapidly advances their thinking, knowledge, and skills. Nurses begin to feel comfortable in their roles.

Knowing Phase – the nurse begins to see him or herself as a separate practitioner from others on the team. During this phase, nurses begin to find professional meaning and purpose in their work when they receive support. They can begin to provide others with team backup.

Duchsher warns us that it is in this final phase that new graduates often become restless and dissatisfied. The second six months of a beginning nurse’s career can destabilize without seasoned nurses’ coaching and mentoring.  Nurses need consistent support and constructive feedback throughout all 12 months; otherwise, they may not achieve a desirable level of professional socialization. During this last phase, new nurses achieve self-actualization and are ready to become engaged in the shared governance of their units.

Sadly, many units today don’t have seasoned nurses to provide the coaching and mentoring that new nurses need. Nurses in the “being phase” are coaching nurses in the “doing phase.” New graduates may leave their first employer without achieving full professional socialization and involvement as team members.  If the nurse’s next role is working for an agency or on a travel assignment, it is unlikely that they will fully integrate into a team and profession. This shift has long-term implications for the nursing profession if many new graduates choose contingent employment as their career trajectory.

I urge residency program coordinators and nurse managers to talk about professional socialization from starting employment. There are dangers in pursuing work as a travel nurse if you are not fully socialized. One manager told me she has begun to push back on this trend, using coaching as her strategy. She points out the nurse’s resources on her current unit and how those resources are not available when traveling. She counsels her new graduates that if they move to travel too early, they jeopardize their licenses because they are not fully competent, yet others will have that expectation. Without this intervention, this trend could significantly impact the future of nursing as new nurses never become fully invested in their profession.

© emergingrnleader.com 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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