4 Ways to Prepare for Your Nurse Residency Program
Nurse residency programs are educational programs hosted by hospitals. These programs include curriculums, often easing nurses into responsibilities that they will face on-the-job, and we’re here to help you prepare for your nurse residency.
Similar to on-the-job training, nurse residency is meant to provide a solid and effective transition from nursing school to the real thing. Residency programs are paid and often full-time. These programs were designed to create more competent and experienced nurses and mitigate or avoid a high turnover rate.
However, just because a nurse residency program isn’t quite the same as being a nurse, doesn’t mean it’s any less stressful.
In fact, in some ways, it can be even tougher as you are typically thrown into a completely new environment, tasked with performing a number of different jobs while simultaneously paying attention to weekly or monthly meetings, taking notes of hospital policies, gathering data for yourself and your managers, and more.
How to Prepare for Your Nurse Residency
Nurse residency programs typically last about half a year or a year and are meant to help turn bright-eyed graduates into analytical and effective healthcare providers.
These teach nurses critical thinking at work to help improve hospital policies, reduce the workload of their colleagues, and improve quality of life.
Members of nurse residency programs often meet for conferences and meetings, share insights, and discuss specialties. As a nurse, you will be asked to specialize (med-surg, pediatrics, labor and delivery, ICU, etc.) and learn more about the branch of medicine you are interested in.
These four tips will help you prepare for your program.
1. Know and Understand What You’re in For
Because most hospitals execute nurse residency programs differently, it’s difficult to tell an aspiring nurse exactly what they’re in for. You will have to get in contact with your hospital of choice and ask for a curriculum.
Not only does this give you a better idea of what you might be doing for the coming months, but it can also help assuage any worries or anxieties that you might have about the near future. Nursing is a notoriously stressful job, so it isn’t a bad idea to take away the stress of facing unknown challenges this early into your career.
There will still be tough days that seemingly come out of the blue and knowing the structure of your residency program doesn’t necessarily prepare you for it but knowing what you’re in for can take off a lot of initial stress.
2. Select Comfortable and Practical Attire
A nursing job involves long shifts, often spent stood up or walking, moving between floors, carrying anything from records and files to medical equipment. Nurses have to duck, squat, and sometimes run from patient to patient, from station to station.
While there’s downtime, the uptime often requires lots of physical activity, and calls for comfortable attire.
Nurses, like many doctors, wear scrubs – but choosing the right scrubs can be the difference between feeling sweaty and restricted, or cool and mobile. Today’s best scrubs are built with all fits and sizes in mind, with:
- Slits
- Numerous pockets
- Flexible fiber
- Sweat-absorbing properties
Scrubs come in various colors to suit any number of hospital dress codes, as well as various prints for doctors or nurses who work in pediatrics or prefer clothing with more personality. Comfortable underwear is a must as well, for both sexes.
Beyond scrubs and clothing, there’s the need for good footwear. While we are made to be on our feet, our feet are not necessarily made for tiled floors. Comfortable footwear with a large toe box and an arched insole can make a world of difference.
To prevent varicose veins and other circulatory problems caused by constant standing, nurses are urged to invest in compression socks and/or leggings.
3. Bring All the Right Tools for the Job
Hospitals often provide their own stethoscopes and clipboards, but it can be a good idea to bring your own tools anyway.
High-quality stethoscopes designed for the specialty you’re interested in can be far more useful than generic variants, and it’s important to bring your own notes, cheat sheets, pens, and scissors.
Medical scissors often come in handy, particularly in a pinch, when you need to cut a patient free from an unruly knot, cut open the packaging for crucial medication, or cut through tubing.
4. Prepare for an Onslaught of Stress
More than just knowing what you’re in for, it’s important to figure out how you’re going to cope with the stress of a full-time nursing job.
As you prepare for residency, figure out and effectively identify methods you can use to destress and manage your cortisol, from going easy on the coffee to creating personal rituals to help you stay sane after a bad day.
It can be very hard to take on serious commitments, like having a big pet or exercising every day, but little forms of self-care can go a long way to help you take a load off. Examples include:
- Getting into arts and crafts. Working with your hands can be extremely gratifying, and fun to learn. It can also be a way to help you drown out anxious thoughts and focus on the task at hand.
- Taking care of succulents. Some succulents are very beginner-friendly and watching them slowly grow and even bloom can be very encouraging. For many adults who feel anxious or stressed, taking care of succulents has become a common and healthy refuge.
- Developing and following a low-cost skincare routine. Not only can this help you maintain and improve your self-esteem, but it’s a great way to cap off a day and prepare for sleep. Good sleep is very important, especially in a job where it seems hard to come by.
- Making music or art for yourself. Like working with your hands, drawing or writing music can be a way to exercise your creativity, and relax after a long day.
- Playing relaxing video games. Video games can be emotive, or cathartic, or relaxing, or deeply engaging. Like movies or a good book, they can help you unwind and cope with a tough day.
The Takeaway
Nurse residency programs can be perfect for helping aspiring nurses to transition from school into clinical practice.
Nurses are made aware of their responsibilities fairly early in the curriculum of most nursing schools, but it takes hands-on experience to learn to work with the rest of a hospital’s staff and learn how to deal with the stress that accompanies the job.
These tips and insights can help you cope with the challenges of the day-by-day not just emotionally, but physically as well.
