curious about length of orientation to labor and delivery

[tntblonde]

I was just looking for some information. How long do most nurses have to orient to labor and delivery? Our unit orients birth center nurses for 6 months with a preceptor, then they are considered as staff always working with a more experienced labor nurse. This is mostly nurses that have been previously working not new grads. Our chief of staff( MD) thinks that it should be longer... which financially is crazy.. he doesnt feel as though these nurses should be counted as staff for at least a year! Most of the nurses that have oriented recentlly have been in nursing for at leat 10 years..they are certainly not new nurses... I'm just curious how long do other centers do???

[L&Dnurse13]

Wow. 6 months sounds wonderful. I work in a high risk l&d and only got 12 weeks as a new grad. 2 of those were hospital orientation. 10 weeks after beginning on l&d I was on my own. I did have a resource person assigned to me for the next year. Our resource RN's answer ?'s but do not go into deliveries with you unless something is going on. I felt so lost. I have been in L&D for 4 years now and am comfortable, but that took about 2 years to accomplish. 6 months would be great, but we do an average of 400 deliveries a month, so it is sometimes hard to keep an orientee that long. I know as a preceptor now it is hard to have a new grad ready after 10 weeks. There have been times we have had to let someone go early due to census on the floor.

[Life_Wanderer]

We orient new RNs includind newgrads and RNs with other nursing experiences for 12 weeks and only for postpartum at first. Then after 2+years, the worthy ones get to orient to L&D with classes and all. For about 12 weeks. We do ~2000 deliveries a year.