One of the benefits of joining the Versant RN Residency community is attending the annual Client Conferences. It is a chance for networking, problem solving, and collaborating at every level. And, Collaboration was the theme this year in San Antonio, Texas for the 8th Annual Versant Client Conference.
What makes the Versant Client Conference distinctive is the participation at all levels from both the attendees and the Versant community. Chief Nursing Officers, residency managers, resident alumni all rub shoulders with the Versant management, directors, and associates.
The conference has grown and evolved each year with more sessions, expanding best practices, and going mobile with social media keeping the conference highlights available to those not able to attend.
This Versant Client Conferences are also a great chance to hear from nationally recognized nursing leadership. Michael Bleich, PhD, RN, FAAN, and Dean of Goldfarb School of Nursing at Barnes-Jewish College in St. Louis, Missouri stepped up to the podium for the Keynote Address. As part of the 2010 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Initiative on the Future of Nursing at the Institute of Medicine, Bleich has repeatedly thrown his support behind the importance of nursing residency programs like Versant.
“Nursing is the only profession that hardwires individuals, patients, and the community,” Bleich said. “There is no great medicine without great nursing.”
Bleich made a point of saying it is not just how you “do” a nurse’s job but how to “be” a nurse, which is exactly the point of bringing all areas of nursing education and practice together in residency programs. It is residency programs which support the collaboration of managers, educators, preceptors, and all the others who take the time to develop and sustain professional nursing organizations, one nurse at a time®.
Panel presentations during both full days of the conference really highlight how the different hospitals and residencies are positioning their nurses for the future of the profession.
Coast-to-coast, from Oregon to Florida, residency participants are collaborating with people within their own community, other organizations, and educational institutions to build new facets into their residency programs.
Amy Doepken, BSN, RN, CCRN, from Legacy Health in Oregon, is busy with one of the exciting new Versant collaborative projects, transitioning experienced nurses. “What do you do for that mid-career person?” Doepken asked. “The Transition Residency offers support services for those experienced nurses transitioning to other areas.”
Doepken explained that while the experienced nurse has strong clinical skills, the collaborative nature of the Versant Transition Residency allows for stepping back into the learning role, provides support of preceptors and mentors to help with the move to a new unit and its individual culture, and individual education plans to help chart and achieve in new challenges.
Baptist Health South Florida and Nova Southeastern University have banded together for a collaborative program between standard nursing school education and the hospital’s “Scholars” program, which awards student nurses with scholarships and stipends while they complete their clinical rotations. Once graduated, the new nurses transition easily into the Versant RN Residency program. This collaborative model has been highly successful for the hospital system in increasing their numbers of new nursing hires.
Multiple Concurrent Education Sessions over the course of the client conference allows attendees to get a taste of what their colleagues are practicing to improve and expand their Versant Residencies.
In one session, Dawna Willsey, MSN, RN, CNOR, at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) explained how integrating both the RN Residency and the Association of Perioperative Registered Nurses’ (AORN) Periop 101 program has benefitted CHLA in recruiting, educating, and retaining safe, competent, professional nurses.
Willsey cited the collaboration as a real opportunity to use creative, outside the box techniques to transition new grads and experienced nurses new to perioperative services to the operating room.
In another education session, Lynn Carlson, BSN, RN, ONC, of OSF Saint Anthony Medical Center in Rockford, Illinois discussed their use of skills labs and simulation for new nurse residents.
“We feel new nurses can overcome their fears and anxieties if they are given a chance to practice their skills and not cause harm to actual patients,” Carlson explained. “The online modules help prepare our residents and they are very cost effective,” she added.
Using the Self-Assessment in Voyager along with a written assessment of skills during new employee orientation, educators at OSF Saint Anthony Medical Center can identify areas where the Residency team and new nurses need to focus.
“We do chest tubes, we have IV arms, we have simulators, and a SIM man,” Carlson said. “Some RNs come in with no nursing experience at all, some have had internships. The SIM lab allows the residents to learn at their own skill and comfort level. We have the policies and procedures for each skill right there so we can get everyone on board.”
Like many professional conferences, poster presentations featuring accomplishments of participating attendees are part of the experience. What makes the poster presentations different is that many of the presenters are making their first forays into nursing research.
Six posters were highlighted from the podium before the general poster session and they provided a real taste for what the different organizations across the country are focusing on.
Out of CHLA, collaboration on a different level is determining the best candidates to accept into the residency programs. The “It Takes a Village: A Collaborative Approach to Hiring New Graduate Nurses” poster highlighted how a team made up of representatives from human resources, nurse recruitment, RN Residency staff, unit managers and educators, and staff nurses all work together to hire the best new grads for their institution.
Another poster focused on better communication between RN Residency Preceptors. Britney Newman, BSN, RN and Steve Henning, BSN, RN, CNOR, from Texas Health Arlington Memorial Hospital, explained how a preceptor handoff tool was developed and how that tool has ensured the resident’s needs and goals are shared between changing preceptors and has improved resident retention.
Now, of course, client conferences shouldn’t be all about work but even the fun times at this year’s 8th Annual Versant Client Conference somehow pulled that key of Collaboration into the mix. The Alumni Breakfast pitted graduates of the Versant RN Residency programs around the country against one another as they championed their teammates in games derived from the popular television show “Minute to Win It.”
There was also a scavenger hunt that sent teams from all the various hospitals scrambling around downtown San Antonio seeking out cowboy hats, local landmarks, and popular destinations, giving everyone a chance to take in the sights outside the conference rooms.
The capstone speaker of the conference was nationally recognized nursing expert Marie Manthey, PhD (hon.), MNA, FRCN, FAAN and founder and president emeritus of Creative Health Care Management. Manthey describes herself as knowing she “wanted to be a nurse since the age of five. My whole career has been about values in nursing.”
“The thing I really love is the tagline for this conference, ‘One Nurse at a Time,’” Manthey said. She then related that tagline to the story of a boy saving starfish on a beach.
While hundreds of stranded starfish lay at his feet the boy would pick up one and throw it back in the ocean. When a passerby asked why he bothered, there were miles of starfish and the boy couldn’t possibly make a difference. As the boy tossed another back into the water he replied, “I made a difference for that one.”
“In order for us to stand tall, we need to have that personal movement forward,” Manthey said. “One starfish at a time.”
The conference closed with awards for longevity in the Versant RN Residency program and a video offering from Baptist Health South Florida showcasing how the Versant program allows for recognizing nursing resident’s different needs and that recognition can help all residents at different levels succeed.
“We aren’t going to solve {issues of} pay in this room,” Mike Carman said. “But, we are going to address work satisfaction. We exist because of an academic service gap. At the heart of what we do is to be the best we could possibly be. The Resident is at our core.”
