title: [Reducing occupational burnout and enhancing job performance in new nurses: the efficacy of "last mile" programs].
abstract: BACKGROUND
  New nurses undergo a stressful and challenging transition process in the nursing workplace. Lack of patient care knowledge and skills and work adaption difficulties lead to a high turnover rate that drains essential new talent away from the nursing profession and further exacerbates professional staffing shortages in the healthcare sector. The "last mile" program is a program developed jointly by a nursing school and hospital as a mechanism to bridge classroom learning to clinical practice and smooth the transition of nursing students into nursing professionals.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The purpose of this study was to understand the effect of the "last mile" program on job performance and occupational burnout among new nurses.
  
  
  METHODS
  We conducted a quasi-experimental study in 2009 on a convenience sample of new nurses in a medical center. Participants were assigned into two groups, namely those enrolled in the last mile program (n = 29) and those not enrolled in the program (n = 94). Research team members and several collaborative universities developed the last mile program used in this study; Seven experts established content validity; The last mile program included 84 hours of lecture courses and 160 hours of clinical practice. Data was collected using the nursing job performance scale developed in 2007 by Greenslade and Jimmieson and translated ÷ back translated into an equivalent Chinese version. Exploratory factor analysis showed all items aggraded into 8 factors, which could be divided into task performance and contextual performance concept categories. Task performance concepts included: social support, information, coordination of care, and technical care; Contextual performance concepts included: interpersonal support, job-task support, volunteering for additional duties and compliance. The Cronbach's α for the 8 factors were .70-.95. The occupational burnout inventory included the 4 subscales of personal burnout, work-related burnout, client-related burnout, and over-commitment, with associated Cronbach's α ranging from .84-.90. Data was collected at one, three, and six months after employment. Repeated measures ANOVA and an independent t-test were used to analyze data.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The average age of the 123 participants surveyed was 23 years, with no differences identified between last-mile and non-last-mile groups in terms of education level, work unit, or other demographic variables. New nurses who participated in the last mile program achieved significantly higher performance scores for job-task support, volunteering for additional duties, and overall task and contextual performance than those who did not. Last-mile-program group participants also had significantly lower client-related burnout than their non-last-mile-program peers.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The last mile program facilitates new nurses' contextual performance and reduces incidence of care burnout. The cooperative education model linking universities and hospitals can be a positive component in a new nurse retention strategy for hospital administrators and educators.
authors.affiliation: Department of Nursing, Cathay General Hospital, ROC.
authors.forename: Hsiu-Mei
authors.initials: HM
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Pei-Fen
authors.initials: PF
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Hsueh-Hua
authors.initials: HH
authors.lastname: Ho
authors.forename: Ping-Ling
authors.initials: PL
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Hui-Lin
authors.initials: HL
authors.lastname: Chao
authors.forename: Hsiao-Lien
authors.initials: HL
authors.lastname: Chen
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002055:Burnout, Professional / Q000517:prevention & control*; D006801:Humans; D009726:Nurses; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis