Experienced Nurses Transition to Practice.

When I think about transition to practice, I immediately think about the new graduate nurse. The novice nurse who spent countless hours learning from a textbook, practicing skills in a laboratory setting, and rotating through many clinical experiences. I conjure up a pleasant image of the new nurse who is excited about their inaugural nursing job as they don their sparkling clean uniform and pristine nursing shoes. I see the nurse who is ready to apply what was learned in a controlled setting taking the good from all their mentors while weeding out the bad to define a personal nursing identity of their own. But there are other new nurses out there-the experienced nurse who is transitioning to a new specialty. For the purposes of this article, we will call them the transitioning experienced nurse.

A Systematic Review on Interventions Supporting Preceptor Development.

Increases in newly licensed nurses and experienced nurses changing specialties create a challenge for nursing professional development specialists (NPDS). The NPDS must use the best available evidence in designing programs. A systematic review of interventions for developing preceptors is needed to inform the NPDS in best practice. A search was conducted for full-text, quantitative, and mixed-methods articles published after the year 2000. Over 4000 titles were initially identified, which yielded 12 research studies for evaluation and syntheses. Results identified a limited body of evidence reflecting a need for NPDS to increase efforts in measuring the effectiveness of preceptor development initiatives.(See CE Video, Supplemental Digital Content 1, http://links.lww.com/JNPD/A9).