New nurses’ transition to practice experience after completion of the enhancement training program in the Sultanate of Oman

Abstract

In 2021, the Directorate General of Nursing Affairs (DGNA) at the Ministry of Health (MOH) in the Sultanate of Oman has established a 12-month training program for new nursing graduates known as the Enhancement Training Program (ETP). The program aims to intensively train novice nurses in seven critical specialties and equip them with the specialty knowledge, skills, and professional competence required to deliver safe and specialized care to critically ill patients. This study aims to determine the levels of confidence, comfort, satisfaction, stress, and experiences of transition-to-practice among nurses who completed the program successfully, and to assess the differences in the levels of confidence, comfort, satisfaction, stress, and experiences of transition-to-practice among the nurses participated in different specialties. The study sample target the first cohort of nurses who participated in the ETP from June 2021 to June 2022 and passed the program successfully (n = 313). Casey-Fink Graduate Nurse Experience Survey was utilized to evaluate the experiences of the participating nurses. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 29 software used to analyze the collected data by performing descriptive analysis using means and standard deviations. Inferential analysis (analysis of variance [ANOVA]) was conducted to assess the variance between the groups so as to identify any statistical differences among the means of all the specialty groups. The findings of this study provide evidence supporting the effectiveness of the ETP in boosting the confidence, comfort, and satisfaction of novice nurses.