From novice to advanced beginner: the critical care internship.
Our unit is a 12-bed medical-surgical intensive care unit in a small central Florida community. Finding experienced critical care nurses to fill vacancies is very difficult. We have offered a critical care internship for the past few years to attempt to augment our staff. Without the resources of a unit-based educator or clinical nurse specialist and with a very limited budget, we are committed to improving our internship to provide us with safe, competent critical care nurses who are willing to become members of our team. A literature review was conducted, and recommendations were developed to improve our current internship to better meet the needs of the unit and the beginning critical care nurses.
Duvall
Judy Jo
JJ
Tennessee Tech University, Cookeville, Tennessee, USA. judyjoduvall@earthlink.net
D003422:Critical Care; D004506:Education, Nursing; D005431:Florida; D006801:Humans; D007397:Internship, Nonmedical; D009741:Nursing Staff, Hospital / Q000193:education* / Q000600:supply & distribution; D011231:Preceptorship