Worcester Business Journal

16 Worcester Business Journal | June 24, 2024 | wbjournal.com UMMC's parent organization, UMass Memorial Health, now boasts a first-year registered nurse retention rate hovering between 90-95% annually. "UMass is recognizing the need to mentor nurses and to help them and to give them a reduced patient assignment with a mentor so that they get to learn how to do nursing, right," said David Schildmeier, MNA director of public communications. Customizable to nurses' needs e New Grad program accepts three cohorts a year, totalling in about 200 residents per calendar year. e first 13 weeks of the program are considered orientation in which residents work 40 hours a week on a clinical unit with an assigned nurse preceptor and backup preceptors with one day a week reserved for class. Classes are not meant to reteach what was taught in nursing school, said founder of the New Grad program, Karen Uttaro, who is UMMC's senior director for professional practice, quali- ty, and regulatory. Instead, the program bridges the gap between what nurses have been taught and the inner workings of the Medical Center. Aer orientation, residents work on their clinical units and come together once a month for a debrief session where they can talk about how they're feeling, challenges they've encountered, and what ways they can best be supported followed by sessions with subject matter experts to talk and learn about differ- ent skills such as working with behavioral health patients or those in palliative care. Each resident is partnered with a nursing pro- fessional devel- opment partner, who do weekly check-ins during orientation and monthly check-ins for the remainder of the program. ough this is the standard rubric for the new grads, the program is designed to be customizable to each of the nurses allowing for them to spend more time in orientation or have fewer check-ins depending on their needs. A mounting issue Uttaro led the New Grad program's first cohort of residents in 2007 and has worked to evolve the program to where As burnout becomes a greater problem in health care, UMass Memorial's first-year registered nurse program works to keep high retention rates Keeping nurses in the field BY MICA KANNER-MASCOLO WBJ Staff Writer O ne in five Massachusetts nurses plan to leave the profession within two years, a figure twice as high as it was just five years ago, according to the Massachu- setts Nurses Association labor union. e problem over nurses leaving the profession comes as nurses face mount- ing challenges like unsafe assignments and staffing shortages, according to the 2024 edition of the MNA's State of Nurs- ing in Massachusetts survey. "Nursing is going to be hard regard- less. You're with people when they're their most vulnerable, you're with people when they need someone, when they're at arguably their lowest," said Madinah Xhemalallari, a registered nurse and member of the New Graduate Nurse Residency Program at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester. To help prepare new nurses for the reality of the profession and combat the growing problem of burnout, UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester offers its New Graduate Nurse Residency Program, which over the course of 12 months seeks to center education, com- munity, and support for those entering the field. Karen Uttaro, founder of the New Grad program PHOTOS | MATT WRIGHT (From left) Teresa Decalles, Madinah Xhemalallari, Meaghan Kelleher and Madelyn Wilde are first-year registered nurses in UMass Memorial's New Graduate Nurse Residency Program.

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