Evaluating and supporting successful nursing orientations

According to current literature, unsuccessful hospital-based in-person unit-specific nursing orientation leads to gaps in nurses' unique knowledge and skills to the unit, and feelings of inadequate preparedness. This nursing practice project intends to help bridge the gap between evidence-based successful hospital nursing orientation programs and the existing in-person unit-specific orientation provided to new nursing hires at the project site. Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels of Evaluation model guided the development of the In-Person Unit-Specific Nursing Orientation Evaluation Survey. The survey provides nursing leadership with a formal evaluation tool to assess for strengths and opportunities for improvement while offering new nursing hires a chance to provide honest feedback about their nursing orientation experiences to drive positive changes. Best practices from the literature and the survey results were summarized to provide nursing leadership recommendations to establish a successful nursing orientation