New grads and chemotherapy

[Kylie2012]

Good Afternoon. I am an Oncology RN and have been for the past 8 years. I am orienting new grads to the floor who have absolutely no hospital experience and they are encouraging them to hurry up and complete the chemotherapy courses to get their certification. Does anyone know any evidence based practice that provides any information on time frames to get oriented to nursing before you throw in chemotherapy and everything that goes along with that? Anyone that can provide any information at all would be helpful. I'm trying to get backup to present to the manager to help save these nurses and patients from errors.

[adventure_rn, MSN, NP]

No personal experience, but during my peds heme-onc rotation, I believe that nurses weren't allowed to become certified until they had a certain number of months of experience on the unit.

It makes a lot of sense. I work in a PICU, and new hires who don't previously have PALS aren't even allowed to take their initial PALS certification until they have at least 6 months experience. The idea is that as a new grad with little to no experience, you won't be able to get nearly as much out of the course since you won't have the knowledge base or experience to transfer the information into actual practice. They'd rather have you wait six months and better understand resuscitation than rush you through and not really know what you're doing.