An Academic-Practice Partnership to Support Transition to Practice

Repercussions from the COVID pandemic and a depleted nursing workforce demand more robust support to assure successful new graduate nurse transitions. Clinical learning in the real-world patient care setting is widely regarded as the essential element for preparation to practice. An academic-practice partnership established an apprenticeship program offering student nurse's greater exposure to real-world clinical experience to evaluate the value of a student nurse apprenticeship on new graduate nurse readiness for practice. Students complete 180 apprenticeship hours over 3 semesters. Satisfaction with the apprenticeship program was expressed by 100% of leaders/mentors and 93% of students. Most students also expressed an interest in a wider variety of clinical settings. This apprenticeship program is a demonstration of academic and practice partners leveraging their combined resources to invest in nursing student preparation to accelerate readiness to practice. An apprenticeship program offered in partnership with academia and practice can support the nursing workforce and may decrease the time required to prepare novice nurses for independent practice.