Hospitals keep more nurses thanks to residency program.

USED to be that when Ann Dechairo-Marino hired a registered nurse fresh out of college, she crossed her fingers that the new hire would adjust well enough to real-life patient care at Northridge Hospital Medical Center to last the year.

With a chronic nationwide nursing shortage especially acute in Southern California, Dechairo-Marino, the hospital's chief nurse executive, can't afford to lose a single nurse.

These days, she credits the hospital's use of an innovative, evidence-based nurse residency program in cutting her facility's 12-month turnover rate for first-year nurses to less than 17 percent from 40 percent over the last two years.

Dechairo-Marino said the program, developed at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, not only has saved the hospital in recruiting costs, but also has helped the Catholic Healthcare West-owned facility attract a higher caliber of job candidate.

"There's a lot of competition for the best graduates and it can be difficult to convince someone to come over the hill to the San Fernando Valley," said Dechairo-Marino, whose hospital helped field test the Childrens Hospital program in November 2004. "We had to have something unusual, something that would attract people for the educational experience, not the signing bonus."

That's just the result Charlie Krozek, Childrens Hospital's former director of research and education, was looking for when he helped develop the first-of-its-kind program in 1999. Today, as president of Versant Advantage Inc., Krozek's 17-employee company has 25 hospitals around the country using or preparing to launch its high-tech, data-driven Versant RN Residency training program. Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center last month was one of four hospitals that became clients last month, and the sixth in Los Angeles County.

Unlike new doctors, who long have been required to serve a formal hospital residency, new nurses at best might get a two-month homegrown orientation at their first job.

What Versant RN Residency offers is a standardized national program, adaptable to a hospital's local policies. Trainees spend time in the classroom and in Web-based lessons, and receive hands-on training and evaluation by an experienced nurse called a preceptor. They're also assigned a non-supervising nurse who serves as a mentor.

Head nurses like Dechairo-Marino, whose duties include overseeing around 600 full and part-time nurses at her 426-bed hospital, can chart the progress of each trainee on Versant's software.

"Hospitals are more complex than ever these days so that the gap between what is taught in school and what is needed for safe practice has gotten wider and wider," said Krozek.

A Childrens Hospital spin-off, two-year-old Versant Advantage is a non-profit benefit corporation. A client hospital typically spends around $25,000 per person to put a new nurse through the 18-week adult care training or 22-week pediatrics program, which includes the time Versant staff take to set up the program at a new hospital and provide ongoing support.

Staff reporter Deborah Crowe can be reached at [phone], ext. 232, or at [e-mail].