Orientation

[karnicurnc, MSN, APRN, CNS]

I am trying to get a feel for how long orientation is in a level III NICU. We used to break ours up into 2 6-week blocks about 6 mos apart. Now we do 12 weeks, although 1 week is dedicated to hospital orientation and computer classes and the final week the new nurse has her own assignment with a specified go-to person. So essentially it is 10 weeks of patient care with a dedicated preceptor. It never seems like enough. Thank you in advance for your input!

[TeriNICUrn]

We have a 20 week orientation. The first week is Hospital Orient and computer classes. The last 4 weeks we have our own assignment with a go to person. We are a Level III NICU though. I'm in my 9th week so far. So far So good.

[umcRN, BSN, RN]

10 weeks does not seem long enough!

As a new grad I had 6 months! It was broken into three phases, phase 1 (feeders/growers, stable admits, bili lights, nasal cannula/vapotherm etc). Phase two (stable vents, cpap/sipap, stable post-ops etc). Phase three (HFOV, ECMO, cooling, sick admits, bedside surgeries, sick micro's, pphn, pressors, nitric etc). I think the way my orientation was done was great, we were introduced to new concepts slowly and slowly advanced our skills. For the first month or so off orientation we had a resource person assigned to us as well who generally had a fairly light assignment so they could be there to answer our questions.

Now as an experienced nurse, when I transferred to the peds cicu I had a 4 month orientation, now I had experience in this unit already as a float nurse but that was the standard orientation for experienced nurses.

In both situations I think 10 weeks is not enough.

[dseem13]

In our NICU you orient for approximately 12 weeks of intermediate care with a preceptor. You work 6mos-1yr before you are then oriented to CPAP, vents, going to deliveries, etc. I think it's great to get comfortable with the less sick babies before being introduced to the sicker ones.