New employees orientation

[OvertimeMom]

How long do you orientate new employees before they work alone? Are they each assigned a mentor to be sure they are exposed and oriented to all procedures done in the department or does one person keep up with all orientees? We orient new nurses to colonoscopies and EGDs first and then they work alone on those procedures and over time learn the other procedures (i.e. Bronchoscopies, ERCP, EBUS, etc). We find that it takes forever (1 year) to get them oriented to the other procedures because we are so busy and they stay stuck in the basic colon and egd cases. Advise?

[OnTheRunNM]

Hi There..optimally I like the orientee to be with one preceptor throughout the orientation which for my dept is 4 months long. We are an all inclusive unit as in we do our own intake and all of our recovery. I start the orientee in intake and recovery for 1 month. Then procedure rooms for 2 months to learn our majority cases (EGD/COLON/FLEX SIG) I also have a learn as we go approach for other procedures we do but not as often such as ERCP,EBUS, and Capsule endoscopy, and yes, due to staffing and volume it takes a longer time to competency for the new nurse in those cases I just try my best to expose and get the new nurse in there whenever one of those cases come up. The last month is to learn the reprocessing of the instruments as all full time RNs must have competency with this. When officially off of orientation from those 4 months then I will assign the new nurse to learn Bronch with whichever nurse is assigned that month OR if we are busy and short staffed, I will sometimes take the new nurse and train them in Bronchoscopy myself.