A self-care activity to support stress management and resilience in new graduate nurses: A quality initiative to reduce turnover

The transition to practice is challenging and stressful for new graduate nurses which leads to turnover within the first year. New graduate nurse turnover negatively impacts patient outcomes. Self-care programs emerged in the literature as supportive of stress and to build resilience. The purpose of this project was to implement an evidence-based self-care activity to support stress, build resilience and subsequently reduce turnover during the transition to practice and beyond for new graduate nurses. The project conducted a pre and post intervention design with the use of intentional self-care activities. Participants were recruited after successful completion from a healthcare affiliated associate degree registered nursing program. The Perceived Stress Scale and the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale were used to measure the project specific aims to support stress and build resilience. The intervention consisted of an initial educational session including transition to practice, stress, resilience, self-care, and included active participation of self-care practices. Participants were then assigned a self-care webinar package designed by the American Nurses Association to complete over a 12-week timeframe while actively transitioning to practice. There was a statistically significant reduction in perceived stress scores with little to no change in resilience scores. Barriers to participant engagement in the intervention included lack of time, and confounding variables including the COVID-19 pandemic, preceptor variations, and shift type. Implications from this project suggest self-care as a key component to the orientation phase for new graduate nurses upon hire.