RECOGNITION — Trinity Health System celebrated its nurse resident program’s Practice Transition Accreditation Program’s accreditation, a distinction given to only 319 programs nationwide. Taking part in Wednesday’s festivities were, from left, Chief Nursing Officer Rhonda Hatfield; Residency Coordinator Kristen Fisher; Residential Educator Donna Kiaski; Common Spirit’s SE Regional Director of Residency Winifred Stump; and Melissa Hannan, dean of Trinity’s School of Nursing. -- Linda Harris

STEUBENVILLE — Trinity Health System’s Nurse Residency Program celebrated an achievement officials say no one else in the Tri-State Area has accomplished–earning the Practice Transition Accreditation Program designation from the American Nurses Credentialing Center.

The PTAC accreditation was announced during a reception Wednesday “celebrating the accomplishments of our RN residents,” Rhonda Hatfield, Trinity’s chief nursing officer, said.

Hatfield said the designation is “a very big deal,” reporting only 319 nursing residency programs in the country have earned it. Trinity is No. 312.

She said the residency program pairs new nursing graduates with less than a year on the job with a preceptor — a mentor who works with that person one-on-one for a year, supervising and evaluating their performance and helping them make the transition from student to working professional. Participation is mandatory.

To earn the designation, hospitals must collect and track data on every new RN grad with less than a year of experience they bring in during a two-year period.

“There’s two years of documentation that is collected and tracked on every new RN grad that we hire during those two years,” she said. “And then there’s also a satisfaction survey of those graduates who the program supported in their transition from new grad to RN work.”

Hatfield said they “get the feedback, the good and the bad, and then we set goals to improve on it each year.”

“By doing that, we improve the retention of new nurses, which is a nationwide challenge.”

Hatfield said the national turnover rate for new nurses is between 17.5 percent and 30 percent. Since establishing their residency program, Trinity has achieved an 83 percent retention rate.

“The old way was to ‘eat our young,'” Resident Educator Donna Kiaski said, explaining how in the past a fresh-from-school nurse might get an ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe you don’t know this” reaction from their more experienced peers, when you were kind of just out there trying to feel your way on the floor. But now you have guidance, and you have some leadership — you have a go-to person.”

To ensure they “keep the standard and don’t fall back into (the old ways), Kiaski said they’ll have to requalify every four years to maintain their accreditation.

“It’s a big deal because of how much it costs to replace an RN,” she said, likening the preceptor-resident relationship to “a married state — they’ll always be together.”

“Preceptors are with them for the whole year,” she added. “You have to have a lot of manager support, you know, for staffing, because you’re counting those two staff members as one staff member for that entire job.”