New BSN graduates who are looking for a job in nursing are invited to apply to the VA Salt Lake City Health Care System’s Transition-to-Practice (TTP) Program. Six post-graduate nurses will be selected to participate in the program for 2014-2015, which begins in late January 2015. A post-graduate nurse is defined as: “a graduate nurse who has successfully completed a full course of nursing in an approved nursing school and is an RN with less than 1 year of nursing experience.”
Graduates interested in apply should log on to USAjobs.org and search for “Transition to Practice RN”. Additional opportunities may be available at other VA facilities throughout the U.S.
While nursing is, and continues to be, a fast-growing profession with plenty of demand, some nursing graduates are discovering that entry-level jobs can be harder to find than jobs requiring at least two or more years of experience.
The Veterans Administration (VA) employs thousands of nurses throughout the U.S. to care for military veterans and their families, and understands what a valuable contribution nurses make to healthcare teams. Over the past decade they have seen an increase in the number of currently employed RNs who are close to, or currently eligible for, retirement. For that reason they have increased recruitment and retention efforts for new RNs.
Recognizing that the adjustment from classrooms to clinical practice can be difficult for new nursing graduates, often contributing to high turnover rates in the first two years, the VA decided to implement a program to recruit qualified graduates and assist in their transition into the workforce—the TTP Program.
It’s a 12-month residency program with both didactic and clinical components available to new RNs, focused on refining clinical competencies and developing professional nursing roles and leadership characteristics. TTP participants can also participate in frequent meetings, group clinical debriefings, one-on-one mentoring, and evidence-based practice projects.