ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Ensuring students are both confident and competent for clinical practice will lead to improved patient outcomes. Early exposure to delivering safe and effective care using knowledge, skills, and abilities that are consonant with professional practice is essential. PROBLEM: Caring for an increasingly complex patient population is challenging. Entry-to-practice competencies must begin early in the student's education and be developed throughout. APPROACH: This educational initiative outlines an innovative and a collaborative evidence-based learning experience that prepares prelicensure nursing students to deliver safe and effective patient-centered care during their first clinical practice. Lecture and laboratory topics, clinical skills stations, and simulation scenarios were developed to promote critical thinking and clinical judgment in a complex health care environment. OUTCOMES: More than 2300 first-year clinical students, instructors, and staff participated in this rigorous course-wide experience. CONCLUSION: This 1-day immersion cultivates safe practice and may be incorporated throughout the curriculum as students encounter increasingly challenging clinical practice experiences.
