Practice-Ready Nurse Graduates

New graduates face a mismatch between what they learned in their nursing programs and what their jobs require of them. Educational programs often focus on imparting knowledge, rather than demonstrating competencies nurses will need to be successful in their future practice. In addition, Nursing curricula often do not integrate a focus on the social determinants of health—the conditions in the places where people are born, live, learn, work, and age that affect their health—and nurses’ roles in improving health equity.

Outside of the classroom, nursing students face barriers in gaining real-life clinical experience. Clinical placements often do not allow students to practice addressing some of nurses’ most common challenges: performing difficult procedures or caring for multiple patients with diverse needs. Given the demands on practicing nurses, the typical preceptor model—pairing one nursing student with one practicing nurse—is also a capacity challenge.

These challenges have significant consequences. Nearly one in five new registered nurses (RNs) leave their first job within a year. The average cost of this turnover was more than $40,000 per nurse in 2021—a lot for health care systems to bear.

Practice-Ready Nurse Graduates pilots will help ensure newly graduated nurses can immediately contribute to and succeed in a variety of settings where patients need care. Pilots will promote contemporary teaching methods and support innovations in competency validation, clinical preceptorship, and the integration of technology to aid competency development. Pilots will help produce graduates who are ready to work across settings and tackle today's—and tomorrow's—needs.