The implementation of a new-graduate nurse residency training program directly into psychiatric-mental health nursing

The specialty of psychiatric mental health nursing, as with all of nursing, has reached a critical shortage, which is posing a crisis in health care. Historically, the practice in schools of nursing has been to strongly encourage graduates to experience medical-surgical nursing during their first year of employment while discouraging those new graduates who may be interested in going directly into a specialty from doing so. New-graduate nurse residency training programs have focused on the general nursing areas such as critical care, emergency nursing, and medical-surgical nursing, leaving the specialty area of psychiatric mental health with less of a cadre to draw from, as attraction to these training programs is great among new-graduate nurses. The focus of this article is the description of a creative and successful new-graduate residency training program directly into psychiatric mental health nursing. The components of this program are easily replicable to other facilities and nursing specialties.