Experiences of newly graduated nurses within the first year of work

The aim of the study was to explore the experiences of newly graduated nurses during their first year of work. It is written to provide nursing students and upcoming nursing graduates a picture on the experiences of new nurses. A descriptive literature review, with thematic analyses was utilized in this study. A systematic literature search from CINAHL was conducted using advanced search. The nine studies obtained for this review presented similar results indicating that the first year is stressful and overwhelming. Factors such as education, training, environment, and support play an important role in their readiness to practice. Also, finding their identity as a nurse and realizing the difference between their expectation and the reality. Given the outcome, avenues for future research include investigation of the experiences of new nurses during the pandemic, studies that consider which experiences contribute to the nurses’ motivation to remain in the nursing profession and research to determine factors that lead nurses to change profession